


Just Shy of Twilight

by pointlessprincess



Series: Twilight OC sins [1]
Category: Homestuck, Twilight
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Human Names, M/M, Not self-shipping I promise, OC sins, Other, PTSD, Vampires, clearly an AU, minor dubcon, some cliches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-23 13:06:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7464456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pointlessprincess/pseuds/pointlessprincess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was nearly nine o’clock in the morning in Phoenix, Arizona, and the weather was absolutely perfect.</p><p>Some might have called it too hot. The temperature was just below eighty degrees, warm enough to be uncomfortable in the right clothes, in the sun. Kretta knew from experience that the day would only get warmer, hotter, until seeking out the shelter of the shade was necessary for most to keep comfortable outside. Most of the people she knew would be inside at this time, maybe for the rest of the day. They would enjoy the much-needed air conditioning, none of them had ever enjoyed being outside, especially not in the sun.</p><p>((First part of four (one for each book), so it's a little OC-heavy at first, but perspectives will change as time passes. First Fic! I would love feedback.))</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Love With the Sun, and a Few Other Things

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go. I'm writing this as practice for finishing novel-level works, so if you're into long fics then I have your back. As I said in the description, I'm planning on writing out the plot equivalent of four books, with extra plot. Hopefully this fic is Mary-Sue free (I took the obligatory litmus test and everything), and I can spell (mostly). Good place to kill time. I like to think I don't break a lot of characters, but fuck it. Who knows. Clearly this isn't going to be a carbon-copy of Twilight itself, Cronus is no Edward, I promise lots of plot twists and no needless bashing of anyone. Enjoy.

It was nearly nine o’clock in the morning in Phoenix, Arizona, and the weather was absolutely perfect. 

Some might have called it too hot. The temperature was just below eighty degrees, warm enough to be uncomfortable in the right clothes, in the sun. Kretta knew from experience that the day would only get warmer, hotter, until seeking out the shelter of the shade was necessary for most to keep comfortable outside. Most of the people she knew would be inside at this time, maybe for the rest of the day. They would enjoy the much-needed air conditioning, none of them had ever enjoyed being outside, especially not in the sun.

Kretta loved to be outside in the sun. Even in the clothes she wore, her wardrobe consisting of largely plain t-shirts with too-long sleeves, leggings meant to resemble jeans so closely it took a moment to discern that there was anything different. Finding legitimate jeans in her size meant either multiple stores, a trip to the children’s section, sometimes both. 

She and her mother had worked together to pull the top of her stepfather’s convertible down before they left for the airport, so that she could enjoy the warmth and the light while she could. Her stepfather, a fairly diminutive but not unpleasant man, had taken her mother’s car into work that morning for exactly that purpose. There were only a handful more days before both of the cars would be loaded on a boat, destined to arrive in sunny, sunny Bahrain. That was to be her stepfather’s newest duty station. He was in the military, her mother had met him online. 

Happily married, the two were ready to start a life together. Who was Kretta to impose on them?

There was another option, at least. Certainly, it wasn’t the most appealing of options, but it was another option nonetheless. Her father lived elsewhere. He lived alone, in a reasonably sized house. A room had already been set up for her there, long ago, when she had first been born. Of course the crib had been replaced with a toddler’s bed, and then a larger model. Her father had been so pleased to hear that she wanted to stay with him, he had decided to foot the bill for shipping some of her things with her. It was his hope that the familiar belongings would make her feel more at home, even in a place so different from the one she was used to.

Kretta shared his hope, however unlikely it felt. She didn’t want to be miserable, or to hurt him by letting any misery show. Her father was a good man. He didn’t deserve to be hurt. But it was dark, where he lived. The unassuming little town he called home expected rain nearly every day, and snow in the appropriate seasons. Having only ever visited in the summer, Kretta couldn’t say she’d experienced the latter. The former was dismal at best. Humidity made her coppery curls swell with frizz, made her loose clothing cling to the visible bronze of her skin. 

She wondered if anyone would comment on her skin. Small towns were stigmatized as racist, weren’t they? Her mind flitted to the news report that had played just that morning, detailing the events in Ferguson, Missouri that had taken place not a year before. Her own coloring had little to do with a tan, of course, despite where she lived. She didn’t think she’d darkened more than a shade or two on her hands and her face since her and her mother’s move to Phoenix from Georgia nearly two years before. There were very strict rules in her house about sunscreen, and between those rules and her near constant cover of clothing she had yet to be sunburned anywhere but her cheeks. The burn had freckled, much to Kretta’s dismay. Her mother had told her she looked a bit like Raggedy Ann, if Raggedy Ann was even a little bit black. 

Defeated by the comparison, she had conceded it was true. It was at least true that, next to her mother, she felt like a rag doll. A scarecrow might be a more adept comparison, if one looked at her skinny limbs, the lack of any kind of development in her chest despite her having just turned seventeen. It both infuriated and relieved her. As her mother told it, boobs were overrated.

Her mother ought to know. Standing at least a head shorter than most of the adults Kretta knew, Minatian was modelled after an hourglass, with skin the color of milk chocolate and dark curls. The story of her great-grandmother’s arrival in New Orleans to join the rebellious movement of jazz and freedom in the 1900s had been told and told again. How she had married a musician and done her best to give her children a better life than was available in her native France. Kretta never tired of the stories. When she looked at her mother, there were times she could see her great-grandmother’s face, as well. She imagined that they must have smiled the same. Her mother’s smile reminded her of warmth and hot food and dancing all at once, like a party she could carry with her. There had been a time when Kretta herself danced, but that time was over. That time had ended years before. 

“We wouldn’t mind if you came with us, Kretta.” Minatian’s voice was gentle. Most things about her were just that. Gentle. There was a moment of panic as Kretta considered that she would be alone, with no one to remind her of the things she often forgot; to check the mail, to put the trash out the night before the truck came, to do laundry on Saturdays before she ran out of clothes. She reminded herself sharply on the same tangent that her husband would do that. Thomas was a responsible man. 

“I know, mom. I want to go.” She managed a smile. It wasn’t entirely a lie, after all. Seeing her dad again wouldn’t be terrible. “I want to go. We talked about this, right? I should spend some time with dad, before I go off to college.” 

“I know that’s what you said…” Her mother sighed. “But you know everything for your passport has been straightened out, just in case. We’ve got money set aside in case you need a plane ticket. Say the word and we’ll have you on a flight.”

“I know.” Still smiling, she leaned over to kiss her mother’s cheek. “I’ll be fine, mama, don’t worry. I’ve got everything I need in my bag and my suitcase. My stuff will be there in a week.”  
“Yes, yes, I’m silly to worry. Tell David I say hello, won’t you?”  
“Of course.”

The flight from Phoenix to Port Angeles was marketed as a round four hour trip. According to Kretta’s watch, it took just a little bit less than that. It was raining in Port Angeles, a fact that made her grateful for both the jacket and the umbrella in her backpack. Every second of the plane ride was restless, though the flight had been perfectly steady. Kretta felt the twisting tendrils of anxiety in her chest, thorned like the rose bush she and her mother kept outside their cheerfully-painted little trailer. She tried to imagine a rose bush growing in her ribcage, instead of fear. As though the change would stop the way it threatened to strangle her from the inside. Halfway through the flight she all but bolted to the bathroom to be sick. A meal was offered, something perfectly innocuous, and she’d refused in fear of being ill again. As it was, her head still spun enough to make her dizzy.

Her father was waiting for her beside the carousel of baggage claim. By the time she had disembarked he had already grabbed her suitcase. That was kind of him, though she could have gotten it herself just as easily. It was a nice gesture.

“Hey, kiddo.” He pulled her into a quick hug once she was in reach, looking much more excited than she had expected. David Nactir, one of comparatively few EMTs that worked in the local hospital. The exotic tone of his last name clashed messily with his appearance, all thinning blond hair and freckled cheeks, the beginnings of a beer-belly visible through his shirt and his rain jacket alike. The name had been a gift from his late father, a failing actor turned school teacher who hadn’t cared enough about appearances enough to change his name again when he settled down.

Kretta didn’t mind it. She thought the name was interesting, unique. But how her father could be in so few layers and not be shivering was beyond Kretta. Already, her hands were shaking with the cold.

“Hi, dad.” She put on a smile. “Thanks for picking me up. It’s a little far for a taxi.”  
“I had the night off anyways, sweetheart, don’t worry.” It looked for a moment like he would try to take her hand, despite her being far too old to pull her balled-up fists out of her sleeve.. “How’s your mother?”

“She’s good, and she says hi. I should hurry up and message her, before she gets too worried.” Already, she was drawing her dilapidated iPod out of the depths of her jacket pocket, hopeful that the airport would come equipt with wifi. 

“Yeah, sure. Password’s over there.” He gestured to a poster stapled to the wall not five feet away from where they stood. “Is this all your bags, K?”

Her eyes shifted to the suitcase in his grasp. It was average in size, she thought, though it had seen better days. “Should I have more?”

“I thought teenage girls were supposed to be all about fashion,” he joked. “This is fine, kiddo. Message your mother and we’ll go.”

Kretta felt a bit guilty, as though she could have been just a touch friendlier. It had been some time since he’d seen her, after all. Almost two years had passed. She knew that she looked plenty different. Maybe some warning could have been in order. Then again, he had to have known she would change.

Thankfully enough, he hadn’t come to get her in his usual mode of transportation. Her appearance would cause enough talk as it was, there was no need for her to arrive in an ambulance. His car was simple, silver, the pinnacle of frugal middle class culture. The thought made Kretta smile, just a bit. She was glad her father didn’t see. Explaining the joke would be too difficult to do, and she was wary of offending him. Kretta wasn’t fond of conflict.

“Your mother told me you were looking for a car to drive to school in.” He started, once they were free of the parking lot. His words made her grateful she had only put one earbud in.  
“That’s right. I thought it might be a good idea.” 

“I found one I think you’ll like.” He looked very pleased with himself. “And it wasn’t too expensive. South of $1,500, though it needs a new coat of paint. I went ahead and got it for you. Do you remember Grant Makara, on the reservation?”

Kretta shook her head. There was a reserved named La Push situated right on the coast. She remembered vaguely attending fishing trips, when she was younger. Much younger. She hadn’t gone fishing with her father since she was eight. At that time her mother had pitched a fit about it, plagued by nightmares of her little girl drowning in a moment of inattention. Kretta had been able to swim perfectly at eight. 

“His son has been badgering him about a new car for years, so he finally gave in, offered it to me cheap when I said you were coming to stay.”

“What year is it?” She bounced in her seat, just a bit, and her father smiled at the familiarity of her excitement. 

“1960s, sometime in that decade. It’s an old Pontiac G-something. Your mom said you had money saved up, I figured if you didn’t like the paint you could use that to get a different color.”

Kretta’s eyes widened. “...A Pontiac GTO?”

“That sounds right. It’s green and white. The white’s chipped, not too badly. He let his boy do some work on the engine, so it runs a little faster than it should. Shouldn’t break down any time soon.” He chuckled. “And you won’t have to worry about a wreck, it’s a solid thing.”

“Some of the people in Phoenix had those,” Her hands twisted in her pockets, trying to warm themselves faster. A smile stayed lit on her otherwise serious features. “Everybody repaints them the classic colors, and shines them up.”

“I didn’t know you liked cars. Could be fun for days off,” he speculated. “Something we could do. I’m not used to needing days off. It might be a nice change.”

“Yeah.” She turned to look out the window, curious to watch the way the rain hit the window. It didn’t rain often in Phoenix. “It really might.”

The rest of the ride was quiet, in a comfortable enough way. Kretta was content to look out the window, reassuringly familiar music from her iPod soothing at least some of her nerves. The scenery was beautiful, lush green seeming to cover every available surface that wasn’t the road. She imagined what it would be like to watch the moss and the tree roots by the side of the road grow over the asphalt to cover the road entirely. If the forest reclaimed the space they drove on, if the flowers sprang through the hard path until it was so worn and cracked no one could pass through, if birds and deer and wolves alike walked on the broken, dusty asphalt instead. She tried her best not to think of the coming threat of a new school.

The house was as unremarkable as she remembered it being. Her mother had helped him pick it out, among the few and far between options of the stagnant housing market in the early days of their marriage. Kretta wondered idly if the town had been even smaller before. There were still rose bushes planted in the yard, though overgrown and wild. It had taken her mother most of the duration of her brief first marriage to find roses that grew in the climate. These were crocus roses, fading from the center of the blossoms from peach to white. Charlotte roses grew with them, yellow and white respectively, tall around the perimeter of the yard. Her mother loved roses. Briefly, she felt the tendrils in her chest tighten. 

“What do you think, K?” Her father’s voice broke her concentration. He was asking about the car, she realized. It sat in the driveway proudly, the boxy shape and chipping paint a testament to the years it could claim. There was something honest about it that Kretta liked immediately, something permanent about it’s age and it’s bulky stature that made her want to try driving it. There was the brief impulse to try and hit something with it, to see how sturdy it really was. She shoved the thought away as quickly as it had come.

“It’s amazing.” The genuine awe in her words only made her dad’s smile widen. There she was, there was his little girl. Her hand made contact with the window in an automatic way, as though she wanted nothing more than to touch it. “I want to drive it.”

“Maybe not tonight. You’ve got to unpack, get ready for tomorrow.”

Kretta stiffened as he got out of the car, trying to shove his words back, away from her, out of her mind. Tomorrow, she would be going to a school of more than three hundred strangers. At least it was small, at least there were less people. Everyone knew everyone. Maybe the school would be...safer, that way. There would be no anonymity. Her roses threatened to suffocate her as she forced herself to exit the car, backpack in hand. Her father towed her suitcase around the car and up towards the door, leaving her to follow quickly after him to get out of the rain. 

It seemed a tender mercy that he left her alone to unpack. Then again, she had always been more like her father, in mannerisms. Quiet, and independent. She hauled the suitcase easily up the stairs to her room. The window overlooked the square little backyard, framed with more roses, their yellow an unexpected burst of sunlight. Her mother had done all she could to add light to the house.

Her room looked just how she had remembered it. The walls were a pale shade of purple, her childhood favorite color, There were blankets on the bed, sheets and a soft-looking blanket she remembered as having a home on the back of the couch in the living room. It was only temporary, until her things arrived. Her own comforter was orange, patterned with darker swirls. It had been a gift from one of her mother’s friends. The dresser was still painted white, enough to hold the bulk of her clothes. She had toed off her boots in the doorway, leaving her with one pair of sneakers and a pair of ballet flats to put away in the closet with her lone dress. It was simple, loose-fitting cotton in a dark shade of blue. The sleeves covered her hands when she wore it, and the hem covered her feet. It’s collar dipped barely to her collarbone. Her mother had ordered it for her online. 

The bed still had a canopy over it, from when she was little. It was strangely comforting. A dream catcher hung from the center of the inside. She wondered if it had been a gift from the man her father mentioned having bought her truck from. Everything was the same as she had left it. Her father must have dusted before she arrived. Suitcase stowed in the largely empty closet, She let herself drift toward the window, framed by light, sheer curtains. They were the kind of ineffective curtains no one in Phoenix had, because of their impracticality. Kretta loved the material, the way it shimmered in the ambient light of the rainy day. The sun was still there, she reminded herself, looking up at the clouds for a moment. There was still light.

She elected to take a shower in the house’s single bathroom. It was a bit tight, maybe, though she hardly noticed. The hot water was soothing, so was the steam. It swirled in patterns not unlike the fog outside. She breathed it in as she tried not to think about the next day, pretending it would help her breathe more easily.

It seemed her father wasn’t safe from a midlife crisis. His insecurities manifested in the form of a full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. The size and the location made it so unavoidable that it was a strain for Kretta to pull her robe on before she caught a glimpse of herself in it’s surface.

Her hair was already frizzy, the hot steam urging it into a cloud around her head and her shoulders. She was glad her hair wasn’t kinky the way her grandmother’s had been, when it wasn’t treated at the salon. As it was she only had curls, given a redder hue by the lightening influence of her father’s fair hair. They reached the small of her back. She hadn’t cut her hair since she was ten and she’d cropped it to her shoulders with a purloined pair of safety scissors.With the bathroom done nearly all in white, her skin looked even darker than usual. Perhaps it was the light. Her form looked skinnier in the mirror than it had a week before, though it was difficult to tell. If there was a scale, she might have weighed herself.

A hand smudged the mirror as she reached out to trace her own features. Everything was the same as before she arrived. The curve of her top lip, the sharp quality of her ever-so-slightly hooked nose, the angles of her eyes and they way they curved just slightly down at the corners. Their light grey color, the same as her mother’s. For a moment, she managed a smile. Her mother would be worried, if she didn’t message again soon. There was internet aplenty in the house, she had no excuse not to write.

The v of her robe’s neckline was just low enough to expose a scar, thick and darker than the rest of her skin, the first of many. Uncertain fingertips brushed the edge of it, traced the way veered down towards her chest. Suddenly, it seemed best to dress herself in her room. There was the smell of cooking meat that wafted up the stairs, it was her hope that her dad would be downstairs, cooking, so she couldn’t stumble into him.

Back within what she had come to consider as her own four walls, things were much more secure. She pulled on a clean shirt, and a pair of yoga pants from one of the drawers. There was a shelf of books in the corner of the room that she thought to pick a distraction off of. The thought might have become an action, if not for the restless state of her mind. Sure, she could try to read, but there would be little point to it. Kretta knew herself well enough to know that she would reread every line twice and miss words, still. When she was distracted and upset there was little to be done but crying, and she’d resolved not to do that until she was safely out of her dad’s sight for the night. By the smell of it, she would have to put in an appearance for dinner. Food was the last thing her stomach wanted. It churned on itself whenever she let herself start to panic, feeling then more than ever as full of acid as it always was. She had used to have nightmares about the idea of stomach wounds.

A soft knock at the door drew her from her thoughts. It was strange to have someone knock. Her mother was hardly the knocking sort, and the place that they lived had hardly had rooms to bother knocking to enter. David gave a slight wave when she turned around.

“Can I come in?”  
“It’s your house, dad.”  
He chuckled as he stepped into the room, going to stand beside the desk opposite her bed. With him inside, the room seemed a bit smaller than it had before. “I know. But you’re a teenager, you need your privacy. I was surprised you didn’t close the door. Most of my friends with teenage kids say the doors are almost never open.”

“I didn’t think about it.” It was true, she hadn’t. She would have to be more careful with changing, in the future. That was one awkward situation she would prefer to avoid. “What’s for dinner tonight?”

“Just burgers. Your old man isn’t much of a cook.”

According to her mother, that was an understatement. Kretta had explicit instructions to inspect whatever he fed her carefully before she actually ate it. “Sounds good.”

Dinner was quiet. The burgers were good, despite her mother’s warning. Maybe she had gotten lucky in her first meal. In any event, there was a certain air over the table. She could feel David thinking, though she chastised herself for thinking of him as David. The man’s expression was serious, thoughtful. It was several long minutes of silence before he spoke.

“Your mother told me you’ve been homeschooled for the past year and a half,” he started, leaning against the table on his elbow.

“....Yeah, that’s right.” Dread shifted in her stomach, along with the half of a burger she’d already eaten. “Why?”

“I’m just...concerned. Will you be alright tomorrow?”

There was another question hanging in the air. She did her best to ignore it.

“I’ll be fine.” The answer was too fast, too sharp. Her father seemed to cringe away from her change in tone without moving, as though the way her expression closed was exactly what he had hoped to avoid. 

“If you’re sure….”  
“I am.” She stood, carrying her plate to the sink. Guilt stabbed the pit of her stomach. He was just trying to help. “But I think I’ll go to bed early, extra sleep couldn’t hurt.”  
“Goodnight.” His voice was quiet.  
Kretta disappeared up the stairs without answer.

\----

The house was very quiet the next morning. Rain fell steadily outside, and a quick check of the weather broadcast confirmed that it was nothing unusual. There was a box of donuts on the kitchen and a note that wished her a good day at school. She tucked the note into her pocket like a talisman, willing to take all the help she could get. 

The mantel in the living room was lined with old school photos, from every grade until the year she’d started homeschool. The bright, smiling face and the little dresses in the photos, the crop top she’d worn her freshmen year, made her cringe away. The person in the frames was so different, she could scarcely see herself in them. There were similar features; her curls, her eyes, and the crooked gap on either side of her two front teeth. That was where similarities ended. She wondered if David would be persuaded to take them down, so long as she herself was staying in the house, or if he prefered the glossy pictures to her silence the night before. At least the pictures seemed infallibly happy. Why shouldn’t they be? The girl in the pictures was beautiful.

Climbing into the car, her car, for the first time was fun despite the circumstances. It had been cleaned, but there was the lingering smell of old cigarettes and something damp. Everything was damp in this town. The thought made her want to laugh, the sound that escaped her lips half hysterical even to her own ears. Briefly, she debated returning to her room, telling her dad that she would rather take online classes. 

Yet somehow, she managed to pull out of the driveway. The car’s engine ran even more smoothly than she expected, purring under her. It was only two miles to the school. If not for the rain, she could have walked. She had certainly woken up early enough, not wanting to be late to her first class. The worry had woken her up nearly an hour before she was meant to be up, though waiting in the truck in the parking lot suddenly seemed much more comfortable than waiting inside the house with it’s smiling pictures. 

There were only a handful of cars in the parking lot. The office was barely open, a lone figure braving the elements to enter the building, fumbling with their key. A copy of her schedule was in her bag, though she’d memorized and rememorized her classes, and the room numbers. And the teachers. And the map of the school she had been sent along with the schedule. Maybe school was a bad idea. It was the middle of the semester….

Still, she slipped out of the car with the umbrella she realized her father must have left for her in the passenger seat. The gesture brought a smile to her lips. She hadn’t expected that of him. The short walk to the school’s office was much more bearable with a bit more cover. An elderly, but friendly woman greeted her when she entered, and handed her another copy of her schedule. Bureaucracy at its finest and least efficient. 

“Just pop by if you have any issue, dearie,” The woman smelled like combination of mothballs and spearmint, but her smile was genuine. Short-cropped curls and brightly colored clothes made Kretta wonder if she was just a bit more adventurous than she immediately seemed. “It’s really no trouble! We want to see you all settled in.”

Kretta thanked her and went on her way. Her chest was still overly tight, and there were still at least thirty minutes before class started. Forty-five. She didn’t even have a textbook to read, no homework to look over. The sky was still a melancholy grey, which suited her fine, and it was a relief to have her long sleeves fit her environment. She pulled her jacket closer, not used to the cold and deciding she would see about ways to make her truck’s heat work better. 

By the time other students started to show up en masse, she realized she had chosen a rather unpopular part of the parking lot. That suited her as much as the sky. She thought she might prefer isolation to trying to socialize, especially then. The first day would be difficult enough. At least she could rest easy with the understanding that boys would likely leave her well enough alone. For once, she was thankful for the severe case of resting bitch face she tended to have in public. 

No one bothered her when she slipped into the building. She felt a bit like a homing pigeon swooping into her history class. She had metal shop next, then lunch, then Human Anatomy and finally AP Lang. That would prove to be interesting. She hoped the Human Anatomy teacher would be the sort that allowed dissections. It was a tender mercy that she wouldn’t have a gym class until the next day. 

Her history teacher seemed amiable enough. He didn’t make much of a fuss of introducing her, said her name and told the class to play nice. She appreciated that. After class he called her aside to ask that she pick up a textbook at the end of the day, if she didn’t want to carry it around. That was a nice gesture. The boy behind her, a friendly-looking kid with glasses and some serious buck teeth, introduced himself as John, and chattered quietly through most of the class.

Metal shop afterwards was even better. The teacher barely listened to her name, there was no class introduction. She was sent off to finish a safety worksheet and finish a quiz before she could join the rest of the class. Out of the ten kids in the class, no one approached her. A boy with offensively white hair and tinted safety goggles gave her a thumbs up when she stared at a space just a too close to where he was standing. 

Lunch consisted of John dragging her over to a table and introducing her to everyone. The white-haired kid was Dave, he’d traded the goggles out for sunglasses. Inside. On a day that didn’t need sunglasses to begin with. Kretta shrugged. To each their own. Also at the table was a quartet of girls; Rose, Aradia, Jade, and Kanaya. They seemed nice enough, though Kretta knew she’d miss their names later. Such was life. She was content enough to settle in the chair closest to the corner of the room and eat lunch in peace, observe the cafeteria as she tried to settle her stomach.

There was quite a bit more to observe than she expected.

A group of kids sat alone at a table. Kretta wasn’t convinced they were kids. They didn’t look like kids. They couldn’t have been students, not in such a small, inconsequential, dismal little town. Beautiful people wouldn’t chose to come to Forks. Her mother was proof of that. Nothing good could stay, and yet there they were, practically radiating light in the middle of the perfectly mundane space. 

Kretta counted five of them. Five perfect beings in the middle of the cafeteria.  
Maybe they weren’t actually in the middle. Off-center, just a bit, but that hardly mattered. They were perfect, from hair to skin to clothes, missing nothing but smiles. The cafeteria was centered around them the way Earth orbited the sun.

Their initial brightness distracted from how displeased they seemed. She wondered what could be so wrong as to garner those bitter expressions. Weren’t beautiful people supposed to be happy? Her eyes darted between them, afraid of being noticed. Two girls, and three boys. The girls could have been sisters, both with blonde hair and blue eyes, similar enough that their difference in builds didn’t matter. One of them was tall and graceful, elegant even. She didn’t look like any high school girl Kretta had ever seen. The boy beside her was equally tall, equally blonde, equally pale. They were all pale. The boy looked different enough they might not have been related, and Kretta enjoyed a private joke about how all white people looked the same as the smaller of the girls all but glided to the trashcan to toss away what appeared to be a completely full lunch tray. 

The other boys were just as pale, one with red hair and the other with black. The red-haired boy wore the tackiest pair of hipster glasses, and yet managed to be handsome. Or pretty, maybe, he seemed prettier than he was handsome. A perfect pattern of freckles dotted his cheekbones, the straight line of his nose. The scarf he was wearing managed to be attractive, rather than ugly, despite its terrible print.

It was the last boy that caught her eye.

He seemed even paler than the others. Maybe it was a result of his dark hair. It was dyed, she guessed. He had the palest of freckles as well, and the straightest nose she’d seen outside of museum paintings. He looked like a Renaissance painting, despite his dark jeans and leather jacket. He had an earring in one ear, and rings on every finger. Kretta wouldn’t have questioned if someone told her they really were silver. If she looked for a moment he reminded her of a character from the Outsiders, or some cheesy old precursor to High School Musical. His hair was slicked back in a style she thought would have been ridiculous on anyone but him. She wanted to touch him, and see if his skin was as cool as she expected, as soft as it looked…

But when his dark eyes met hers, he looked furious. He glared like she’d done something wrong, something horribly, offensively frustrating. Kretta shrunk down in her seat. No one else at the table seemed to notice, and she tried to resist the urge to hide under the table. A shiver ran chillingly down her spine. This was ridiculous, she didn’t know him. When she summoned the nerve to look again, he had his head on the table, and the taller of the two perfect girls was smiling in a way she thought might have been cruel, if she hadn’t decided to think the best she could of strangers. None of the individuals at her table offered any explanation for the anomalous group. Just went about lunch, talking and laughing.

Rose and Kanaya walked with her to Human Anatomy. The pair of them were in the back, at the same table. Each table seated only two students, and all but the last table in the third and final row had exactly two students sitting at them. The beautiful boy who had glared at her in the cafeteria populated one seat of said last vacant table. Kretta fought the urge to gulp like a cartoon character at the edge of a cliff, at the mercy of their equally animated nemesis. This situation was all too ironic for her liking.

As it turned out, the teacher, Ms. Blythe, seemed nice enough. She didn’t force any introductions, and assigned her a book immediately. Still, it was difficult to avoid resenting her when she gestured one-handed to the single, predicted empty seat.

“Cronus is your lab partner.” To Kretta, she said; He’ll play nice, I promise. Won’t you, Cronus?”

Cronus. He didn’t look as though he wanted to play nice, didn’t answer, scooted as far away from her chair as he could manage while still technically sitting at the table, looking pointedly away from her. Kretta tried not to let the gesture embarrass her. In her experience, beautiful people weren’t usually very nice, anyways, particularly not in high school. She did remarkably well in her efforts not to look at him again. The one time she did he didn’t look angry, only...troubled. His dark eyes were focused stubbornly on the board. Perhaps he hadn’t been angry with her.

But when her eyes darted to the table, she saw how tightly he was holding into his leg. A white-knuckled grip, tense and angry. He was coiled metal, ready to spring at the slightest touch. Kretta didn’t dare look to his face again. 

The bell rang and he bolted out for the classroom, belongings in hand, and the atmosphere relaxed just a bit. All the same, she left class quickly, too quickly for anyone to start a conversation with her. After straying to pick up her textbook, she slipped carefully into her car. Maneuvering carefully out of the parking lot was a relief. She couldn’t wait to be home, back in the safety and solitude of her room.


	2. A Book With Both Covers on the Table

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it continues.

For the most part, being left alone at school suited Kretta fine. There were two lunch periods, and it seemed most if not all the people she had met the day before had a different lunch than she did on one day. Gym class had gone on without incident. She’d gotten a locker and a uniform, and strict orders to participate in the next class. The uniform was shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, but the coach had promised her underclothes were allowed the second she started to panic. Really, she suspected she had been meant to start that day. The coach seemed nice. Maybe Kretta was biased. Pre Calc went quietly. It wasn’t until lunch that someone spoke to her, taking the seat across from her on the lone empty table she’d managed to find. 

"Thorne. As in, bad part of a rose.” Her new companion had a tone like an agent, debriefing someone for a mission in some impossible movie. “Resident conspiracy theorist in an agency of one. You're new. Name?”

"Kretta.” She offered a slight smile. “I’m guessing this is your table?”

“It is, but don’t worry about it. You’re the first one to sit here in awhile, I gotta say. Noticed you staring at the show.” Thorne grinned, spearing and subsequently jabbing with her broccoli in the direction of the perfect group of teenager. “Anyone introduced you yet?”

Kretta shook her head.  
"I'll give you the code names and the ones on the school roster. Here. Glasses is Eridan Abasolo. Goldfish over there is Vemina Somerset, with the big, watery eyes. Barbie is Lenvoria Somerset, her older sister. You know which one she is, I’m not pointing. They're all related, at least, legally. Some of them are actual siblings. Adopted by Dr. Abasolo, the super-star surgeon whose husband apparently wanted to live in the woods instead of near a respectable hospital. He’s a park ranger. I guess the Somerset girls are the children of a family friend that died, and Glasses is her husband’s nephew."

“Glasses, Wide-Eyes, Barbie. Dr. Abasolo. Ranger husband. Got it. How do you know all these things, and who's that?" She gestured to a blond boy. "Ken?"

"That's Simon Abasolo, he’s from foster care. He's Barbie's main squeeze, so in a way, yes." Thorne chuckled, before the corners of her smile dipped downward.  
"No code name?" Kretta grinned. "Got a crush?”

“Oh, please. Like I want anything Barbie’s had her manicured claws on. I call him Brains, not my finer work, but,” she shrugged, stabbing another vegetable. “It fits, at least, no explanation necessary. These are terrible, by the way, I’m warning you….They’re missing one today, Smokestack. Cronus Abasolo.”  
“I noticed…”

Thorne raised an eyebrow, sipping her chocolate milk so cooly it might have been a glass of wine, or at least a mug of coffee. “Smokestack’s an asshole. Warning you now. I know some of this because he bitches about living here to Glasses in Economy. And Literature, when he isn’t bitching about the readings.”

“He’s in my Human Anatomy class, but he didn’t say a word.” She sighed, taking a reluctant bite of her broccoli. “I’m glad I got cheese with this….I ended up sitting next to him, and he avoided looking at me the whole class. He was very pale, I thought he might be sick….”

"Nah, just separated from everyone he thinks is worth complaining to. They're all pale." Her companion’s eyes flitted briefly over their faces, before focus slid back to her food. "And they all look like a need a good night's sleep, not that I get to talk. Smokestack’s just the only one with dark hair, makes it worse. He’s fine.” 

“How is he related to the doctor?”

Thorne shrugged. “I guess no one really knows, exactly. I think he’s actually related to the doctor, but I’ve heard different things. There are rumors. Some think he’s her nephew, others guess half brother, I’ve heard a few people guessing he’s actually their son but he’s our age--You’re a junior right?”

She nodded, focused on the gossip.  
“That’s what I thought! Anyway, he’s kinda old to be her kid, unless she had him at, like, thirteen. She’s not even thirty. What's your schedule for today? I wanna know if I got a class with you. I’m guessing that we’re totally separated for tomorrow.”

“It’s looking that way. I’m in the library for the next two periods, for online class.”

“Hey, I’ve got a career class fourth today, I’m in there too.” She grinned. “It’s boring, so far. Hopefully you can make it more fun.”

“Well, I suppose I could try,” she joked, taking a sip of her water. “I’ll be doing class work, though.”  
“What class?”  
“French.”  
“Fancy. Spanish wasn’t good enough?”  
Kretta shrugged. “I passed AP my freshmen year. My mother’s first language is Spanish, English is her second. We’re learning French together now.”

“Must be nice.” Something was definitely tense there. Was it about the languages, or her mother? But a subject-change to the dreary weather had them back to amiable chatter in no time. Third period passed slowly after lunch, but fourth had been fun. Thus far, Thorne was the only one she’d given any contact information to. they’d spent most of their time in the library doing nothing in particular. Kretta had finished her work in third period with the consideration that she probably wouldn’t do anything fourth period.

The end of school bell heralded a slower trip to the car than the day before. Thorne got on what might have been the town’s only school bus and gave a sardonic, tortured little wave from her seat. She made a mental note to offer a ride at the first possible opportunity. As it was, she had a date with the grocery store. Her father had confessed to eating a lot of take-out, before proposing they trade off cooking dinner. That suited Kretta fine. She had a mutual grocery list in the front pocket of her bag, and a fair amount of grocery money in her wallet. She vowed the next time to convince him to put in on her debit card. which felt like a much….safer option than carrying cash to school. Then again, she supposed the circumstances she was used to no longer applied. It was unlikely anyone would try to take anything she owned, if only because, by the small town’s standards, she was relatively poor. An EMT’s pay was nothing to write home about.

There was an ostentatious convertible on the edge of the parking lot, that Barbie--Lenvoria--was sliding into the driver’s seat of. Her boyfriend slipped in next to her, while Glasses and Goldfish embarked what looked like a junker car, probably designed to look ironic. Kretta figured her own car’s state she had no room to talk. The look Barbie gave her as she passed was less furious than it was curious. All the same, it made her shudder. She was glad to leave the parking lot once again, thoughts of her new friend set aside.

Grocery shopping was blissfully uneventful. No one gave her any particularly strange looks, and the food was less expensive than she’d expected it to be. By the time she arrived at the house her father still wasn’t in. Soup sounded good to her, so that was what she put on to cook, distracting herself with peeling potatoes. Cooking had been part of her responsibilities at home. Even such a simple, familiar routine put her more at ease. She pointedly did not look at the pictures on the mantle. Her father wouldn’t be home for another hour. He’d taken an earlier shift at the hospital before she came to live with him, so that they could spend more time together. 

By the time David did get home the soup was simmering quietly on a back burner, while Kretta poured over homework at the table. There wasn’t a terrible amount thus far, thankfully, though she found herself reciting layers of the ocean to herself. Epipelagic, mesopelagic, bathypelagic, abyssopelagic, hadal. Epipelagic, mesopelagic, bathypelagic, abyssopelagic, hadal. Epipelagic, mesopelagic, bathypelagic-pelagic, pelagic, pelagic, pelagic, pelagic, pelagic, pelagic--

“Hey, K, how was your day at school?” Her father paused by the door to take his shoes off, giving her a crucial thirty seconds to gather her thoughts. 

“Fine.” There were already bowls and spoons on the counter, along with cups for water. Kretta busied herself with gathering up her work to clear the small table. “How was work, dad?”

“Whoa, are you trying to pull a fast one on me?” He stepped into the kitchen, sniffing appreciatively. “Soup? You didn’t have to cook.”  
“I wanted to.”

“...Okay, kiddo, whatever floats your boat.” The strangeness of her answer didn’t seem to be enough to deter his benign enthusiasm. “What does fine mean? Have you talked to anybody yet? Made any friends?”

“Yes, a few. A boy from history let me sit at his table, John, he was very nice.”

“John Egbert? He’s a good kid, his father owns the grocery store. Nice guy, a little weird…His older sister graduated a few years, she’s going to school in Seattle for baking.”

She nodded. “I spent lunch and fourth period today with Thorne, since the periods are staggered….”

“Thorne?” Her father shook his head, chuckling. “Aclivo?”  
Kretta shrugged.  
“Short, a little bit,” he motioned with his hands, the universal adult male sign for breasts. “Blonde hair, kinda...off?”  
“She didn’t seem off to me….”  
“Well, I guess you’re a teenager too.” He ruffled her curls jovially, before going to investigate the soup. “But you sure know how to pick them. Be careful, alright?”  
“....Alright, dad, I will.” 

There was a moment of silence, awkward silence. Kretta picked nervously at the sleeve of her sweater.  
“This really does smell great.” He was ladling himself a bowl, breathing in again as he went to sit at the table, kissing the top of her head as he went. “You should eat. Who else did you meet? I didn’t get to hear about anything yesterday, you were fast asleep when I got home.”

“I was tired,” she mumbled, grabbing herself a bowl. “....Do you know anything about the Abasolo, family? Dr. Abasolo’s’ kids?”

“I know Dr. Abasolo, yes, she works at the hospital too.” He joked. “Abasolo. She’s an excellent doctor, and very friendly.”

“Oh. Her kids, they’re….different, they don’t really fit in so well….”

“Is that so?” For once, David managed to look annoyed. “Well, I’m sure you know what this town is like. Different takes a little while to get used to. Dr. Abasolo is excellent at what she does, and the people of this town should be glad she’s here and not off in some nationally acclaimed hospital, at the head of her department and getting paid fifteen times what she gets paid here. The only reason she’s here instead of in Seattle is her husband’s job as a park ranger, and we’re lucky she’s here. I’ve seen her save people I thought were circling the drain, people who live here. Her children have never caused any trouble, unlike plenty of local kids. They’ve always been perfectly polite at hospital events, very mature, and their family seems to get along well, for the most part.”

Kretta dipped her head, embarrassed for bringing the topic up. “I didn’t mean...I was just, wondering, is all. They seem fine, and, they’re all very attractive…”

“Yeah,” he snorted, “You should see the good doctor. I swear half the staff stops to stare at her when she comes in, her students have a terrible time paying attention. She’s in cardio, most of them are boys straight out of med school. They tend to back off when they see her husband, he looks a little like he could go rounds with a cougar and come out on top.”

Kretta nodded in quiet agreement, finding herself even more curious than before she had asked after them. The rest of dinner was quiet, and David shooed her upstairs before she could try to clean up afterwards. She did homework quietly on her bed, and messaged her mother a bit before deciding that it was probably late enough to try and sleep.

The rest of the week was quiet. Her work was easy enough, and lunchtimes varied from uneventful to her favorite part of the day, depending on whether or not Thorne was there.

Cronus didn’t reappear. She got the privilege of doing the class’s first dissection on her own, and managed still to finish before the other groups. In the end Rose seemed rather irritated that she managed the scalpel so well, and with the way people seemed to be impressed. She got the feeling that she was intruding on a social niche, but for once, enjoyed the exercise too much to care. Perhaps her partner’s long-term absence wasn’t so bad. There was lingering guilt, as though it were her fault he hadn’t returned. How ridiculous was that?

The weekend brought little but an opportunity to get caught up on homework, and sleep a bit more than she probably should have. A brief foray to a local clothing store in search of warmer clothes was the only thing that broke her peace, a foray too necessary to put off any longer. She located herself practical things; gloves, a scarf, a hat, a heavy coat she decided she liked almost immediately. It was thick canvas, insulated subtlely and decorated with patterned silver buttons and buckles, straps and belts it didn’t need. She put it on as soon as she was back in her car, and admired the way it fell in length to her knees. She would have to go looking for something thermal to wear under her jeans, the school wasn’t heated warmly enough to justify not spending the money. After a moment of consideration, she pulled the hat on too. It was a soft cream color to compliment her hair, but she’d chosen it for its soft fleece inside. The scarf was soft too, a light shade of green. She felt safer wrapped in it. 

By Sunday evening she felt ready to never leave the sparing space of her room again. She paced back and forth when she got too anxious, tidying things meticulously as much as she could justify, writing to her mother. The rain outside the window finally lulled her to sleep.

Monday brought little change, in the grand scheme of things. Her father left for work before she was up, and the world seemed especially grey from Kretta’s vantaged point at the window above the kitchen sink. Most of her instincts told her to get back in her bed and close the canopy, avoid school entirely. A day like this couldn’t bring anything good. The air outside nipped at her exposed skin despite the newly purchased additions to her winter wardrobe. When she made herself hot chocolate, she found herself grabbing a spare thermos out of a cabinet and filling it as well. She turned her car on a few minutes before she went outside in an effort not to freeze to death on her way to the school. 

The bus kids had already been dropped off, thirty minutes before school was set to start. She ventured out of the warmth of her car just long enough to grab Thorne out of the miserable group by the school door. 

“I knew we were friends for a reason,” Thorne said, sliding into the warm passenger’s seat with a sigh of relief and pulling the door firmly closed. “Oh my god, your car smells perfect.”  
The owner of said car raised an eyebrow.  
“What? It smells like heaven. Hot, chocolatey heaven.” She gave the thermos in the other girl’s hand a longing look, so concentrated she nearly dropping the one pressed into her hands. “You….brought me hot chocolate.?  
“Mmhm.” Kretta nearly choked mid-sip when the other leaned quickly over the shift to put her arms around her. Her spluttering didn’t seem to be any kind of deterrent, though the blonde pulled away after a moment or two.  
“Thank you,” she mumbled, her cheeks flushed in embarrassment. She pulled the wool of her hat down self-consciously as she took a long drink, apparently soothed by the taste, eyes closing in apparent pleasure.. “Oh my god, yes. I woke up too late for breakfast.”  
“Do you usually?”  
Thorne looked up from the drink, steam from the container swirling around her face. “Do I usually what?”  
“Miss breakfast.”  
She shrugged nonchalantly. “Sometimes.”  
The other girl nodded. “Okay. Ready for school?”  
“As if.”

Despite mutual reluctance to leave the car, the day could definitely have gone worse. Kretta’s first two classes were uneventful, even boring. It wasn’t until she made the mistake of stepping outside during passing period that it took a turn for the worst. Snow fell in huge, fluffy flakes. From the air of excitement around she guessed it was the first snow of the new year. She ended up losing John to snowball fights on her way to lunch. Dave was missing from the lunch table as well, so was Jade. Rose and Kanaya sat as solemn and quiet as usual, almost eerie in a room full of kids making a ruckus. Everyone, even the Abasolo kids were acting like kids, for once.

Her heart almost stopped when Cronus came sneaking up behind Barbie to ever-so carefully deposit a healthy handful of snow in the hood of her jacket. Barbie didn’t seem to notice, despite the look and grin he shared with his other sister. 

Immediately, she wished Thorne was there. It had been nearly a week, and there he was. She debated spending Human Anatomy in the nurse, for one childish moment. But he didn’t send any particular looks her way, least of all angry looks, so she steeled her nerves for the next class.

“Cronus Abasolo is looking at you,” Rose observed, in her usual monotone way, just when she had convinced herself to go to class.

“Don’t worry about it,” she mumbled. As she left the cafeteria she heard a decidedly outraged gasp from the direction of the Abasolo table.. Barbie must have tried to pull up her hood.

She found her seat a few minutes before class was supposed to start. There was small stack of worksheets on every table. That meant group work, if she’d ever seen it. Determined not to make an idiot of herself, she decided to start on her history homework.

There was movement beside her, the sound of a chair being moved and someone sitting down. Kretta was proud of herself for keeping her eyes trained on her paper. She didn’t even stop writing, didn’t break concentration until he spoke.

“Hello, Kretta,” he started. There was a flash of embarrassment with the way she fought a blush at his saying her name. She looked up at him, not wanting to offend, though seeing the earnest smile that graced his already too-handsome face did nothing to help in that struggle. He looked excited, at least. Far from angry. There was snow still dusting his hair, though it disappeared when he combed his fingers back through it. Somehow he had managed to keep the style, in spite of the snow. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t gotten a chance to introduce myself. I’m Cronus Abasolo.”

“Kretta.” She dipped her head a bit. “But you knew that, I guess.”  
“I think everyone might know that, actually.” He took a seat. “In the school anyways, but probably the whole town. You’re pretty popular, as things stand.”  
“A first,” she assured. 

Ms. Blythe picked that fine moment to start the class. They had to label the bones on the papers, a review for a cumulative practice test. There were no resources to use but memory. Around their table, the class grumbled. Apparently no one had studied.  
Almost no one had studied. Kretta was confident she could fill out a passable amount of the sheets.

A quick, stolen look at Cronus gave the impression he wasn’t nervous, either. Then again, he might just not have cared. He didn’t seem like the type who would care about grades, not that she had any right to judge on appearances. He was leaned back in his chair, grinning in an absolutely disarming way in Ms. Blythe’s direction. Kretta noted with just a bit of amusement that the teacher pointedly didn’t look at him. Years of people-watching made it easy to tell how flustered the teacher got whenever she accidentally made eye contact with him. Was there a story behind that?

“Partner up at your tables, no exceptions. It’s due by the end of this class, as much as you can complete. You may begin.”

Kretta grabbed a worksheet, and set to labelling quietly. Hand bones, she knew her hand bones. Phalanges, metacarpals. Lunate, scaphoid, trapezium, triquetrum, pisiform, capitate, hamate, trapezoid. She couldn’t write as quickly as she could remember the names, and she got the distinct impression Cronus was looking at her. As far as she’d noticed, he had yet to take a paper from the short stack. Lunate, scaphoid, trapezium, triquetrum, pisiform, capitate, hamate, trapezoid. Scaphoid, trapezium, triquetrum, pisiform, capitate, hamate, trapezoid. Trapezium, triquetrum, pisiform, capitate, hamate, trapezoid. Triquetrum, pisiform, capitate, hamate, trapezoid. Pisiform, capitate, hamate--

“Slow down, kitten.” His words made her jump. “Easy. You’ll burn yourself out.”  
“You too, with all your hard work.” The words came out just a bit harsher than she meant them to, but Cronus only laughed. 

“It’s not a race, sweetheart, ‘s only been a minute.”  
This time, her cheeks went a soft pink. “We just have to finish. Less talking, more labelling, or no talking, and I’ll do it.”  
He shrugged, disarming smile completely undampened. “If the lady insists.”

Pisiform, capitate, hamate, trapezoid, she recited in her head, writing again. Capitate, hamate, trapezoid. She finished the worksheet and set it aside, not caring too much about what he decided to do. The next worksheet she grabbed was the chest, he must have grabbed the arm, assuming they had been in ordered. Her process repeated, and repeated again. By the time twenty minutes had passed she reached for what she had thought might be the next paper and turned out to be empty space. Her eyes went to the two separate piles of paper on the desk, and then to Cronus’ face.

“Mind if I check?” He asked, gesturing to her papers, and she felt a surge of defensiveness despite his request’s polite nature.

“Mind if I do?” She countered.

“We can trade.” Her took her papers smoothly, exchanging them for his. It looked as though they’d finished the same amount, she noted. His handwriting made hers look like kindergarten scrawl, and it seemed all of his answers were correct.

He set her papers down, in the center of the table again, where the stack had been originally. “Well, you’re right.”  
“You too.” She set his papers over hers.

All of the other groups were deliberating quietly or otherwise amongst themselves. Some seemed to have decided to put off the assignment as much as they could, and were talking about something else entirely. 

“Am I allowed the privilege of making conversation with you now?” He asked, leaning against the table with all the effortless grace of an experienced model. Kretta wondered if he practiced his smile in the mirror, to make sure it was perfect.  
“Why?”  
“Well,” he didn’t look annoyed quite yet, but she sunk in her chair a bit thinking of how angry with her he had seemed the first time she’d been in the class. The smile shaded with worry as he leaned just a bit closer. “Hey, wait, kitten. Whoa. Not trying to scare you, I swear.”  
“I’m not scared.”  
“That’s good.” His tone was much gentler than it had been, less teasing. “I just want a conversation, y’know? Try to make up for being so rude on day one.”  
“You were stellarly rude,” she agreed, and he gave a quiet, shockingly musical laugh. “Well? It’s true. You could have looked less angry if someone stabbed you in the stomach with a pencil.”

“Could not,” he grumbled. “If someone stabbed me with a pencil I’d stab them back.”  
“Oh, tough.”  
“You’re really insulting, you know.” He put a hand over his heart in mock hurt. “I’m hurt.”  
She smiled slightly, twisting a curl in her fingers. “Don’t be melodramatic.”  
“It’s too late.” Cronus leaned back dramatically in his chair. “I am mortally wounded. Slain, by your cruelty.”

“Don’t be an idiot.” She rested her head on both hands, braced on the table as well.  
“I’m never an idiot.” His lips quirk upward again, and she realized he was looking her over in an...appraising sort of way. As though he thought she was attractive. “I’m something of a genius in this shitty little school, actually. Not that that’s hard, I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“I,” she flushed.  
“What brings you to Forks, just then? The wonderful weather?”

There was rain rattling the window close to him, emphasizing the joke.

“I actually really hate the cold,” she confessed. “But the rain is fine.”  
“It’s going to snow a lot more, you know. You’ll be miserable.”  
“I’ll manage somehow.”  
“An optimistic attitude.”  
“Realistic,” she corrected. “It’ll be fine, I’m sure.”  
The look he gave her was curious. “Alright. But will you answer the first question? What brings you to Forks.”

“My dad.” Her answer felt clipped even in her own mouth. “I’ve lived with my mother for a while. It seems fair for me to get to know him better before I’m on my own. And she, my mother, is remarried now, I’d like to give her some space.”

“You don’t like the guy, or…?”

“No, I like him fine.” Kretta tried to sound casual. “But they’re moving to Bahrain, because he’s military. I didn’t want to intrude on the post-marital bliss.”

“They would probably still be blissful if you were there.” The look he gave her was scrutinizing, curious. His eyes were liquid gold in the center, and she wondered how she had missed such a striking color when she saw him before. “Now you’re unhappy.”

“I’m not unhappy,” she assured, backtracking. “I don’t think I would define my happiness by where I live, it would make things….bleak. I’m nervous.”

“Right now?”  
Hesitantly, she nodded. “You make me nervous.”  
He leaned in just the slightest bit closer. “Can I ask why?”  
“You’re just,” she shied away on instinct. “Intimidating. Nerve-wracking. You don’t do smalltalk. You make me nervous.”

“Well, I’m sorry.” It was almost cute the way he bent, trying to make himself smaller beside her as he raised his hands in a placating fashion. Where had all that anger gone? His eyes shone in the watery light from the window, the most curious shade of light brown she had ever seen. “Not trying to intimidate you, kitten, I swear.”

“I know.” Her voice shook, just a tiny bit. Golden, his eyes were golden. They reminded her of warm caramel, of rich butterscotch and sunlight. So striking. She should have looked at his face more, when she was studying him. “Your eyes are very pretty in this light.”

Cronus grinned, and there was something in the expression that struck her as shark-like. Predatory. It was an effort for her not to flinch. “Mine aren’t as striking as yours. It’s not very often someone ends up with your lucky gene combination. Red hair, curls, grey eyes, and freckles.”

“I get it from my mother,” she mumbled, tugging at one gingery curl sheepishly as she tried to decide whether to be complemented or a little bit weirded out. 

“Is your mother a model?” Cronus joked.  
“She could be.”  
“You could be,” he pointed out, and Kretta shifted nervously with the obvious attention. Somehow, once again, she managed not to draw away from him. “What? It’s true. You could, I swear.”  
“Th-thanks.”

When the bell rang he slipped out of class without another word, leaving her to wander to English in a star-stricken way. He had spent half the conversation complimenting her. Was that....was that normal? Was that how normal boys acted? Her mind flipped back to boys she had known before, to no avail. Had any of them liked her as more than a friend? It occurred to her that she had no point of reference for “normal” flirting--was there any real reason to be unnerved? Something about his smile, the way he had looked at her…

She found Thorne immediately after school.  
“We need to talk tonight.”  
Thorne laughed, making an expression that emphasized the strangeness of the formal request. “Well, okay. You can message me.”  
Kretta bit her lip. “I don’t think it should be a...digitized conversation. It’s official conspiracy theory business. I have some interesting things to report.”

“...Really?” There was a new sort of hope on her face. Kretta got the feeling no one had ever taken her theories seriously. “I mean, yeah. Of course. We should meet somewhere. There’s a, uh, gas station in my neighborhood. Plenty of places to sit, and it’s out of the way enough that nobody here would use it….”

“That’s fine. I could just give you a ride, if you don’t want to ride the bus?”  
Her eyes widened. “Yes, please.”  
“Do we need to stop by your house before we go?”  
She shook her head. “My mother is a nurse. She won’t be back until way late. She’ll never even know that I went anywhere.”  
Kretta nodded. “Okay. Let’s go, then.”

Her new friend seemed all too eager to leave the bus area. They hurried off towards Kretta’s car, only to pause in sync half around the corner to the parking lot as they caught sight of Cronus next to the old Pontiac. 

“Oh my god,” Thorne whispered. “He’s waiting for you.”  
The taller girl shrunk where she stood. “Oh my god.”

Neither of them moved, uncertain what to do. For the record, Kretta supposed he didn’t look much like he was waiting to kidnap her. In fact, she supposed he might not have known that the car was hers. As it was he didn’t seem to be paying much attention to anyone in the parking lot. He was looking at the car with interest, seeming to take inventory of the places where the paint was chipping away, the slight dent in the back bumper.

This couldn’t be normal flirting behavior. Following someone after class was not normal, she knew that much. Following someone after class and waiting for them was stalker behavior, and it took a good ten seconds for Kretta to get air back into her crowded lungs.

“....What do we do?” she whispered.  
“I don’t know.” Thorne looked horrified, further reinforcing her fears..  
“Should I...walk over there?”  
“I don’t know. He’s just waiting….”  
“That’s…” She took in a breath, straightening her shoulders. “I’m going. He can’t scare me away from my own car, that’s ridiculous. We need to go.”  
“Kretta, wait--”

Determined, she all but marched over to him, standing straight but shaking slightly. He looked up as she grew closer and, seeing it was her, his look of concentration became a charming smile. The smile made her falter, but then, she thought it might have fazed anyone. Charming, and yet, he seemed so sharp. His face was either so handsome she couldn’t look, or too angular to be considered handsome. That smile…. 

“Hey, kitten,” He leaned against her car, a cigarette dangling from the hand closer to her. Smoke curled elegantly from his lips, though he was careful not to exhale into her face. The sharp sting of menthol did nothing to detract from the sight. She thought that if she was an artist it might have taken her years to capture that single, careless gesture, and so the sharp rebuke she’d been ready to give him slipped from her mind. “Of course you got a cool car like this. You fly it in from Phoenix?”

She shook her head mutely.

“You must have gone a ways to find it, I’d remember seeing it.”

Again, she shook her head, though she managed words, finally. “My father bought it off a friend on the reservation, he was the first owner.”

“That’s pretty sweet. How much did he give for it, and how’s the engine?”

“He said it was less than $1,500, but I don’t know that I really believe him…” She shrugged. “Engine’s original, I haven’t had a chance to look at yet. His friend’s son put it back together, I guess, he’s pretty good as far as I can tell. Everything sounds great. It’s a V-8, 389-cubic-inch, 348 horsepower.” She frowned thoughtfully. “Hydraulic valve lifters, compression is probably a ratio of 10.4 to one. Axle ratio’s...oh, 3.90 to one? Manual steering is 20 to 1, not as fast as it could be with power steering, but it’s not like there’s drag racing here, I don’t think….”

He gave her a decidedly awed look. “I was gonna ask if you knew what you were driving, but that seems...a little pointless, now. Are you busy later?”

“I--What?”  
“Are you busy later?”  
“For….what?”  
“Well,” he grinned. “For, you know, dinner, or something? Whatever sounds good.”  
Kretta was speechless. “I….”  
“You’ve seduced me with your car knowledge. C’mon, it’d be wild.” One perfect hand caught hers, the one unoccupied with a cigarette, and she tried not to start at how cold it was as he went down dramatically on one knee. “Come to dinner with me, kitten.”

By that point, Kretta was fairly sure her face was redder than her hair. He was looking up at her with those striking golden eyes, a cocky half-smile gracing his lips. She found herself at a complete loss for words. Thorne must have been panicking on the sidelines, thought she couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from Cronus’ face.

“Cronus.”  
Another musical voice sounded from behind her, making her jump. The face of the boy in front of her darkened. He was still beautiful, so beautiful, but furious. At least she had the comfort of knowing his anger wasn’t for her. At least, she hoped…

When she turned it was his older brother who had spoken, Ken. Brains. Psimon.

“We’re leaving,” he said, quietly. “Now.”  
“I don’t want to, actually.”  
“Mother said to come home. No exceptions.”  
His expression grew darker, and the charm slipped. Danger, Kretta’s mind told her. You’re in danger, you stupid girl.

“ I don’t want to,” Cronus repeated, from stubborn to petulant in seconds. Something ugly flashed in his features, with the petulance, peeking ever so slightly out from the facade of the genuine, chivalrous interest he had been showing her when it was just the two of them.

“She said that she would send Dad after you if you didn’t. You don’t want that.”

He made a noise that might have been a hiss, if she hadn’t thought it so….improbable. Despite his anger, the look he gave Kretta was nothing short of pleasant when he turned back to her, Psimon walking away. 

“Another time, then, maybe?” He didn’t wait for an answer, bending quickly to press a cool kiss to her cheek before following after his brother. The smell of smoke lingered after he was gone, clinging to her hair. She watched after him in shock. “See you around~”

Her cheeks were flushed a bright pink when Thorne came to stand cautiously beside her, from fear or embarrassment, she couldn’t say. 

“Did he just…?”  
“Asked me out.” 

The pair of them stared after the shiny black sedan the two boys had disappeared into, as it zipped out of the parking lot. Kretta couldn’t think of much to say, turning to give the other a panicked look. Her cheek felt hot where his lips had brushed her skin.

“What did you, uh, say?”  
She shook her head. “I didn’t. His brother told him to come home, or their mother would send their father out to get him.”  
“Yeah.” Thorne winced. “Ranger Abasolo would kick his ass.”  
“You’ve seen his parents, then?”

The thought of more information was enough to hold her shocked embarrassment at bay for at least a moment, distracted by the idea of knowing more about this strange family.

Hesitantly, she nodded. “Briefly. The showed up with Dr. Abasolo in the office when Smokestack got it for, y’know, smoking. The office has since given up, no one cares enough to arrest him, but...I don’t know, they looked like they might fight until the doctor stepped in.”

“Have you talked to them?”

“Not so much.” Thorne shrugged, looking down, and it seemed there was more to the situation then she was willing to say. “We should go.”

“We should go,” she agreed, circling around to the driver’s side. They got in quietly, neither certain what they should say. The quiet continued for a handful of minutes, so tense in the air Kretta thought she could have cut it with a knife. 

“....So what were you going to tell me?” She tried, leaning back against the seat.

“Smokestack was really friendly with me during anatomy. Really friendly. Scary friendly. I’m not at all sure what I’m supposed to make of it.”

“Well….” Thorne shrugged. “I mean….he might be supernatural, and hell might be frozen over, but it seems like he has a thing for you. A normal, living, breathing girl.”

“....What?”

“A thing for you. You know, a crush or something. Or he wants to make out with you under the bleachers. I don’t know, what do normal teenagers do when they’re amorously interested in another teenager?”

“All my teachers were convinced boys bullied the girls they liked,” she offered, morosely. “I always thought that was bullshit, though.”

“Absolute bullshit,” Thorne agreed. “Even I know that, and the dating pool here has been the same non-inclusive shit since pre-K. But that didn’t look like bullying to me. Maybe he’s just...awkward around girls, and it comes off as creepy. No one in his family talks to anyone but each other, anyways. And both his adopted sisters are taken, which means his dating pool is limited to normal people. Either that or he wants to do something bad to you.”

“....Something bad?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. I guess normal guys tend to rape girls they get all weird and obsessed with. Or he might be a fetishist, like the guy on X Files...did he say anything about your hair?”

Kretta flinched, remembering his expression as he complimented her. Lucky genetics, she could be a model, such pretty hair. “Y-yeah.”

The blonde gave a low whistle.”Weird by anyone’s estimation. Guess you’d better invest on bars for your window, then, if you think he’s gonna--oh, fuck, hey, whoa.”

She carefully grabbed the wheel, noticing how her friend’s hands were shaking.

“Are you okay?” Despite her usual brusque, insincere facade, there was genuine worry in her expression. “I’m sorry, I didn’t really mean that...he probably just likes you. That’s supposed to be a good thing, right? Pretty, popular douche notices the shy new girl. We’ve practically got Grease running at the school now! So you be Sandy, he can be your Danny, and I’ll be Rizzo, Frenchy, or Marty as the situation calls for, okay? Or anybody else.” Her tone was bordering on frantic. “Just don’t ask me to be Cha-Cha, I can’t dance and I’m really, really sorry I scared you.”

“I’ve never seen Grease,” Kretta sniffled. “I’m sorry, I’m overreacting.”

“You’ve never seen Grease?!” Thorne shouted, her grip on the wheel momentarily veering them off the edge of the road in an obvious, even clumsy overreaction. “Holy shit!”

“Holy shit,” Kretta said, more to the carved, soggy dirt behind them than anything. “No wonder you don’t have a license.”

Her friend snorted. “Oh, shut up. Do you have Netflix?”  
“Mmhm. My internet is a little slow, but it works alright…”  
“Then we should go to your place, and watch Grease.” She leaned against Kretta’s shoulder happily. “And X Files.”  
“Should we tell your mom? Do you need to call her?”  
Thorne shrugged. “Nah. It’ll be fine. Trust me.”

And so the rest of the day passed easily, with four bags of popcorn, a lot of hot chocolate, and for once the company of a friend.


	3. Phenomena Fatale (Or Otherwise, But Barely)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Had a friend who's reading over this for me say I was a little formal, so I'm working on that. Really, again, any feedback is welcome! Granted, I'll still post if no one looks at it I guess, but being noticed is always cool.

Emotional preparation notwithstanding, Cronus was not at school the next day, nor the day after that. With such spotted attendance, Kretta half-wondered how he could hope to pass any of his classes, before remembering his family’s wealth. Money did magical things, she thought. Most of her time not in class was spent either doing her schoolwork, imploring Thorne to do her schoolwork, or messaging her mother. Things in sunny, sunny Bahrain seemed to be going well. Her mother was happy, finally. Lastingly happy, it seemed. With that in mind, she couldn’t manage to be bitter about her own decision to leave her alone.

Despite the hope that snow would be delayed at least a bit, Kretta woke the next day to the ambient, blue-grey light of an overcast day and biting cold in her room. If her growing stash of blankets on her bed hadn’t been, well, growing, then she might have woken much sooner. Her mother would have chided her for going to bed without pants, but she’d been too tired after her homework to bother with much but stripping her least-comfortable clothes and crawling under the blankets to sleep. Her wet hair didn’t help the situation, a shudder running down her spine as she rose to confirm what she had already suspected.

It had snowed in the night, and unlike the weak smattering of flakes before, this snow had stayed stubbornly put. If she had been anywhere else, she might have hoped it would melt when the sun rose. But this was Forks. As far as she knew, the sun would remain under cover of thick cloud. The snow, at least for the time being, would remain. Sighing, she set about making two thermoses of hot chocolate and, after realizing she had forty-five minutes before she had to leave the house, french toast. She packed it in a tupperware, drizzled in syrup, and tucked it into her backpack with the thermos she thought least likely to leak, leaving her a free hand to brace herself on whatever she could as she tried to navigate the ice slick that was the driveway. The roses around the house were as beautiful as ever, even coated in an intricate layer of frost. For all her nerves about Cronus, the thought of presenting Thorne with breakfast kept the thorny plant life in her ribcage at bay. 

Would Cronus be there? The question weighed on her mind more than she would have liked as she managed to slip into the driver’s seat of her car without falling; a Herculean feat, to be sure. Risks of potential accidents due to ice hadn’t been enough for her to consider subjecting herself to the equally perilous walk to school, nor the cold that would inevitably follow. Even bundled up as she was, she could feel her nose starting to run. She set her belongings down in the car and started it, before a comparatively quick trip back inside for a tablet of cold medication. Better medicated than miserable, she decided. The car was much warmer when she returned, to her relief, and she set about driving carefully over the dark patches of ice that littered the road to school. 

Thorne was waiting for her this time. They had established a routine of sorts, where Thorne came to sit in the warmth of the passenger seat and drink hot chocolate. She had been so happy the first time that Kretta had since brought two thermoses to school, and vowed privately to continue that practice every day that she could.

“Breakfast?” She asked, offering the still-warm tupperware of french toast out. Thorne’s eyes widened almost comically.

“....You made me breakfast?”

Kretta nodded affirmatively.

“.....Why?”

“It’s leftovers,” she assured, hoping the lie would increase the chance of her new friend accepting the gift. “I thought you might be hungry. Your bus stop is the first one, you have to be there really early.”

There was a moment where it seemed the tupperware would be refused. But she took it carefully, after the span of a few seconds, setting it protectively in her lap.

“....Thank you,”

“There’s a fork inside,” she replied, satisfied that the gesture had been accepted.

“Are you sure you aren’t hungry?”  
“Leftovers,” she repeated. “I already ate. It’s alright.”

“If you’re sure….” She opened the lid carefully, to inhale the warm steam that rose off the bread. “That smells great. Did you make it?”

Again Kretta nodded, taking a sip from her thermos.

“This morning?”

“I usually wake up early.”

“You’re a real oddball, y’know.” Apparently the smell was more than she could resist. The next few minutes were passed peaceably enough in relative quiet, though it managed to be comfortable rather than awkward. Thorne had been hungry, if the speed she finished the food off with was any indicator. After a few minutes she closed the tupperware sheepishly, licking traces of syrup off her lips. “....Seriously, thank you. Where should I…?”

“Glovebox, and,” she offered the other a smile. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You’re a saint. An oddball saint.”

“I do try,” she joked.

“It’s working. Don’t be anything supernatural, okay? I really like having you around.” The girl shifted uncomfortably in her seat, a clear testament of what the admission had cost her. Thorne didn’t seem like someone who bore their feelings easily. “We should go, right? Class starts in ten.”

“Probably, yeah. Don’t forget your hot chocolate.”

“I would never.” She picked the container up quickly.

“You can give the thermos back during lunch.” Reluctantly, she turned the car off.”It’ll be freezing out there.”

“Colder and colder by the minute, probably.” For once, Thorne sounded almost chipper about the prospect of going outside. Kretta wondered if she was the sort of person who got irritable when they were hungry. “We might as well make a break for it while it isn’t snowing.”  
“You have a point. If this keeps up, I’m going to have to get snow chains.” She slipped out her door reluctantly, locking the car and tossing her keys into the bag. Snow chains were probably a good idea, she thought, sparing a glance down at her tires.

“Smokestack’s here today, Thorne observed, from her place on the sidewalk.  
She looked up as discreetly as she could, in the direction of the spaces his and his siblings’ cars usually occupied. Indeed, Cronus was there. He looked up as though to greet her, though the charmed smile froze in shock, even horror, as the high-pitched screech of metal started, making her jump and look quickly behind her, ducking down as though to protect herself.

A dark blue van was careen towards her, skidding helplessly on the ice. John was in the driver’s seat, shouting her name as she realized sharply that the van was going to crush her against the back corner of her own car. Dimly, she registered the scream behind her as Thorne’s, in the same second as the realization that she was going to die.

Something hard and cold hit her in the side, but...from the wrong direction. Another screech sounded as the van folded around the back of her car. Her head hit the asphalt, darkening her vision for an instant as she dazedly registered how the van still slid towards her.

“Shit,” a voice growled, melodic despite the anger. Two pale, perfect hands all but appeared in front of her, bracing against the side of the van. She barely followed their movement as they pulled her legs closer to the cold body against her--it was a body, she realized, her head reeling--as she was swung away from the crushing weight of the destroyed vehicle and out of the space where the van landed a second later.

There were screams sounding in the parking lot seconds later. More than one person was yelling her name, and she heard Thorne’s voice above the others as she tried to process what had happened.

“Kretta,” Cronus’ silky voice was unmistakable in her ear, and she realized after a second that he was holding her. He had jumped in the way of the van, and somehow stopped it with his hands. He’d saved her life. “Can you hear me?”

“Am I dead?” She asked, feeling all but paralyzed.

“No,” He set her carefully on the asphalt. “No, no, no, but you cracked your head pretty good, I don’t know--”

“It’s fine.” Her voice felt surreally quiet, detached, as though it wasn’t her own. “You were by your car.”

“I was right there, kitten.” He offered a lazy grin, gestured towards where she’d been standing, a short ways away. 

“You were next to your car.”

“I wasn’t, I swear.”

“You were!”

“You’re in shock, Kretta. Can you breathe?”

“I should have died.” It was true, she could feel the thorns digging into her lungs, rendered ice-cold with fear. “I a-almost…”

It took a goodly number of people to move the van away from where they were. There were sirens outside, and she realized dimly that she could hear Thorne calling her name as Cronus told her father she had hit her head, and she was laid on the stretcher. 

“Kretta, can you hear me?” The panic in his voice should have gotten a response out of her, but she was so dazed she could only nod, wincing at the throbbing in the back of her head. She was whisked into the ambulance so quickly she could barely register the expressions Cronus’ siblings wore. Anger, disapproval, even amusement. None of them were afraid for his safety, despite the fact they hadn’t yet pried the car away enough to get him free. It seemed they didn’t need to, as Cronus appeared in the back of the ambulance scarcely a minute later.

“Is she okay?” He asked David, sliding into the side opposite him. 

“She’s fine, I think, we won’t know for certain until a doctor has a look at her.”

“Thank god.”

The ride to the hospital was quiet, mostly. Or maybe she was too dazed to follow any conversations. When the ambulance stopped she lurched up, trying to stand, brushing her father off unsuccessfully as she tried to assure him that she could stand. After a moment of disagreement he must have decided it would be easier to help her walk to an ER bed than it would be to force her to lay down again. Cronus had vanished, and she remembered dimly that his mother worked in the hospital. She was a doctor. The bed next to hers was swarmed with hospital personnel, and she realized that they were looking after John, whose wide blue eyes were fixed on her face.

“Kretta, I’m so sorry!” 

“It’s fine, John.” Was that her voice? “I’m not hurt, it’s fine.”

“I’m so sorry, the ice--” He winced as the nurses tried to fuss with the bandages around his head. Kretta could see the blood already spotting the clean white gauze. “Ow! The ice, I couldn’t stop--”

“It’s fine, John. Cronus grabbed me, I’m fine.”  
“Who?”  
“Cronus Abasolo. He was right there.”  
“I didn’t even see him….it all happened so fast. Is he okay?” There was a nasty line of cuts down the side of his forehead, almost to his eye.”Oh my god, I could have killed you…”  
“It’s fine,” she whispered, suddenly dizzy despite her sitting down. “Don’t worry about it.”

John, of course, continued to worry about it. He was in shock, babbling apologies to anyone who would listen. Kretta closed her eyes in an effort to steady her vision, gripping the side of the hospital bed tightly as she laid back. The voices and sounds of activity were all too much. She wanted to be home, in her room, in her and her mother’s home, with her mother. anywhere quiet, anywhere familiar. 

They wheeled her away to X-ray her head and, finding nothing, returned her to the same place. Kretta was too shy to tell them nothing was wrong, only doing as she was told until the pictures came out clear. Not so much as a concussion. John was still apologizing quietly, crying to himself. She would have comforted him if she could, but everything seemed so far away....

“Is she unconscious?”

Cronus’ voice made her eyes snap open. He was standing at the side of her bed, between her and John, looking convincingly worried. It was no surprise that, through the bustle of activity, she hadn’t heard him approach.

“Cronus!” John tried to sit up. “Jesus, Abasolo, I’m so sorry--”

“Hey, easy.” He raised both hands placatingly, flashing perfect white teeth. “Unbunch your panties, Egdork, I’m not hurt. Don’t worry about it.”

For some reason, his assurance seemed to comfort him much more than Kretta’s had. Maybe John was annoyed now--a quick look showed irritation at the nickname. Maybe he wasn’t all that sorry about almost running Cronus over with the van. The thought made her giggle, though the sound came out just a tad hysterical.

“Glad you’ve still got a sense of humor.” He took a seat on the edge of John’s bed, facing her with a slight grin. “They giving you an all-clear, kitten?”

“I’m fine,” she repeated, still dazed. “Why didn’t they put you in a bed?”

“I’ve got friends in high places, so to speak.” The grin widened. “Nepotism is alive and well, in many forms. But I’m here to spring you out, I swear.”

When a doctor finally walked in, Kretta had to do a double-take. 

She was gorgeous.

Gorgeous wasn’t enough. She was better than gorgeous. A radiant goddess, maybe, in the guise of a real-life pinup. Olive-skinned with perfectly permed dark curls, it was as though she had stepped off the side of an old fighter plane, or out of a tattoo, the perfect image of vintage style. Her airbrushed-perfect skin belonged on the cover of a magazine. Bright red lipstick distracted Kretta so entirely that it took a moment for her to realize the woman was a doctor.  
“Nepotism is only in the government, my dear. How are you feeling, Kretta?” Her voice was honey, smooth and sweet. “I took a look at your X-rays, they’re quite clear. On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?”

“Two,” she managed.  
“That’s a good sign.”  
“Are you Dr. Abasolo?”  
“Why yes, I am.” The doctor sat her clipboard down carefully, before turning to face her. “I’ll just do a few quick tests, alright, love? Nothing to worry about, it’s all very routine.”

Kretta nodded mutely, an easier gesture than speaking despite how it make her head throb. The doctor stepped closer, and she knew what her father had meant when he said she distracted hospital staff. The town-wide record for car records might go up if she decided to take a walk during her lunch break.

“Try to follow my finger with your eyes.” She raised one hand, and Kretta’s eyes caught on the glitter of her wedding ring before she followed instructions. 

Cronus looked completely unbothered by the day’s events, drifting ever so casually over to hand his mother her chart from the table before she could pick it up herself. It was possible Kretta imagined the flicker of mild annoyance across her perfect features.

“No issues there.” The smile the doctor gave her was as dazzling as her son’s, if more reassuring. “And your X-rays are clean, you should be free to go provided that your pain doesn’t get worse. I’ll put in a script for some Ibuprofen, you can take it as needed.”

“Thank you, doctor.” she whispered. 

“It’s no trouble, dear.” The sympathetic look the doctor gave her was as dazzling as her smile. It made a blush spread across Kretta’s cheeks, and she looked away, mumbling an apology. “You must be in shock. It’s just lucky that you got out of the way in time. A miracle.”

“Cronus pushed me out of the way.” She mumbled into one hand, her legs drawn up to her chest. It was cold in the ER. They had made her take her jacket off before, and she was too anxious to gather it from the end of the bed she sat in and put it on. 

“What was that?” Dr. Abasolo bent beside her, only darkening her blush. 

“I was lucky C-Cronus pushed me out of the w-w-way,” The stammering was embarrassing, though it didn’t compare to the slightest twitch in the corner of the doctor’s mouth.

“Ah, yes.” She gave no hint of annoyance, though the way the she turned back to her papers was very choreographed. If something had really happened, she knew. “My son is very brave, even if he’s a bit of a scamp at times.”

“Ma, you’re embarrassing me.”

“You’re embarrassing yourself. Go on,” The woman made an achingly graceful shooing motion with one hand, and Cronus rolled his eyes until she smacked him lightly. “Cronus Abasolo, you are not too old for me to throw a shoe at you.”

“‘M goin’,” he muttered. Kretta might have laughed at his peevish expression if not for how she was shivering, unwilling to draw attention to herself. As the doctor drifted over to hand her her coat, it seemed as though she was unsuccessful.

“The shivering is probably shock, love. You should be right as rain by tomorrow. Go home for today, and rest. Tomorrow you should be fine for school. Be careful of the waiting room, it seems half your school is there.” Dr. Abasolo assured, still smiling brilliantly. Kretta mumbled another thanks and the extraordinary woman’s attention was elsewhere, off to see to John and his multiplicity of cuts. “Now you, Mr. Egbert, may have a more difficult time of things….”

Discharged, Kretta made her way down the hall, after Cronus’ retreating form.

“What are you?” She called after him, and seconds--a fraction of a second, a millisecond--later he stood a mere foot away.

“Be quiet,” he hissed, face all cold fury. Angry, yes, but nothing like the first time he had seen her, none of the violence from before in his eyes. The girl recoiled, eyes widening as he grabbed her wrist, too fast to see, dragging her down an empty hall. He only let go when they were definitely alone, eyes darting around before fixing sharply on her. “Someone will hear.”

“I-I…”  
“I was standing beside you, and I pulled you out of the way.”  
“You pushed the van back,” she whispered. “You were by your car.”  
“That’s ridiculous. No one could have done that.”  
“You did.”

“You’re in shock,” he reasoned, the conclusion suspiciously casual. As though he was lying to a child, trying to calm fear he could do nothing about. There was a protective edge behind the sentiment, she thought. Cronus offered her a patronizing smile. “It happened so fast. I came over to say good morning, but didn’t get the chance.”

“You bruised my wrist….”

“So?” Cronus snapped. “You’re probably anemic, look at you. A little kid could bruise your wrist. You’re being ridiculous.”

“Then why are you so angry?”

Her question hung in the air a moment, emotions flitting over his face as she watched him trying to come to some sort of excuse.

“I don’t like to be harassed by random little girl who accuse me of lying. Why won’t you accept it?” There was puzzlement in his voice, with the anger, a sweet undernote of pleading. “What you’re saying is impossible, Kretta. You know that. I would have been crushed, just like you would have.”

“Just like I would have, if you hadn’t stopped the car.”

“...No one will believe you,” he assured, half to her and half to himself. “This is crazy. It’s the shock talking, Nactir. Let it go.”

But she didn’t let it go. Behind his perfectly-delivered lines, she could hear the fear. Fear of what?

“You’re a terrible liar,” she told him, very gently. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“No one would believe you,” he repeated. “I don’t have to be a good liar, because no one would believe you.”

“Thorne would believe me.”

That gave him pause. A muscle in his jaw clenched and unclenched, as though he were literally chewing on a thought.

“Aclivo is a paranoid, suicidal social outcast. She’s a harmless conspiracy crackpot, who’s going to OD in her early twenties, hopefully before she can reproduce. No one will believe anything she says, even if you say it too. They’ll just make you out to be an obsessive freak just like her, and then no one will talk to you at all. Just like her.”

Her eyes widened, in shock and hurt. “W-Why are you being so cruel?”

Cronus snickered.

“I’m a cruel person, kitten.”This time, his smile was...predatory, almost. She felt like a lamb in the presence of a hungry lion. No, a little reef fish inches away from the deadly teeth of a shark. Almost playfully, he ruffled her curls, frigid fingers lingering for an instant on the warm, smooth skin of her jaw. “Run on home now, kitten. Don’t stick your whiskers into other people’s business, or you just might lose them.”

With that, he left the room. Kretta stared after him, trembling, though from the cold of the hospital or from fear at the thinly-veiled threat, she couldn’t say. After what felt like an eternity of trying to gather her thoughts, she managed to will her legs into carrying her off towards the waiting room.

Opening the double doors to face the gathering crowd was every bit as unpleasant as Kretta had imagined it would be. David got to her first, at least, followed closely by Thorne. 

“How are you feeling?” Was his first frantic question, grabbing her shoulders gently. “Are you alright?”

Everyone she had met so far seemed to have packed themselves into the waiting room. Nevermind having a strict truancy policy. Did anyone care how many people were missing class?

“I’m fine.” She grabbed Thorne’s hand tightly when it was offered. “Let’s go.”

“The doctor--”  
“Says I can go. Let’s go, please.”  
“Take me with you,” Thorne demanded, and David didn’t argue. The two girls got into the back of the car, still holding hands.

“You’ll have to call your mother,” David said, as we pulled out of the hospital parking lot in a flash of reasonably economical, mediocre silver. “She’s worried.”

“I wish you hadn’t told her.”

“And risk her finding out? Not a chance.” He had the decency to look guilty, at least. “Sorry, kiddo. Had to be done.”

Her mother was, of course, hysterical by the time she got to calling her. Admittedly, she had put the task off. She and Thorne had made fried chicken, and cleaned up after it, before Kretta finally worked up the nerve to call her and spend the necessary thirty minutes convincing her that she was alright, no need for tears, and no, she was fine in Forks. Everything was fine. No, she didn’t want to fly out in the morning. Yes, she would call on Saturday.

None of what she said was technically lying. Kretta realized that, for once, she wasn’t quite lying when she said that she wanted to be in Forks. There was Thorne, of course, who she had taken to so fast it was a little scary, and the mystery of one handsome, shady, inscrutable Cronus Abasolo. She shouldn’t have been so preoccupied with him, after so little time. Only a few minutes of conversation were enough to keep her up well after she had given Thorne a ride him. Her stomach swirled at the memory of his furious face, the bruising grip on her wrist. The bracelet of bruising had only gotten darker, painful to the touch. She should have been afraid. Wasn’t she afraid?

That night, for the first time, Cronus was in her dreams.


	4. Chapter Four: An Invitation Most Intriguing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lmao here we go

Her dreaming was strikingly vivid, for once. 

The world around her was dark and featureless. Only one feature, one light stood out in the darkness. A single figure, his distinctly beautiful face turned away from her. Instinctively, she knew it was Cronus. There was a flash of bright white smile, before he started to walk away. 

“Catch me if you can,” he said, the words blurring indistinctly, the soft glow of his skin in the inky blackness blurring around his perfect form when he moved. Kretta tried to follow, but it was like walking through honey. 

The darkness wasn’t ink, it was tar. No matter how frantically she tried to run, or even swim towards him, she didn’t seem to move at all. Darkness blotted out her senses, tar catching in her throat as she thrashed helplessly, trying to call for him. In the darkness, there was a brief glimmer of light--could it be him? But crying out again only summoned the unforgiving, unbroken metal curve of John’s van, hurtling towards her.

Kretta woke suddenly, gasping for breath; her hair tangled wildly around her face and neck, matted with sweat, and her heart thudding in her chest. Nightmares were nothing new to her, but then...could this be a nightmare?

A night terror, she decided. It would explain the pounding in her chest. An interruption in her brainwave frequency during non-REM sleep. Not a dream, but a biological hiccup in her unconscious mind. That was all, she told herself. Cronus Abasolo had nothing to do with it.

And yet, she saw his face in the night for weeks to come. Never so distinct as before, but flashes of pale skin that she knew were his. Dark hair, a sharp smile, a hand holding her wrist.

The initial month after the crash incident was unsurprisingly embarrassing. Kretta had prefered neutral apathy and her status as a fast-fading wallflower to the concerned pity almost everyone had started to offer her. John followed her for the first two weeks, apologizing earnestly every chance he got, so earnestly that it was hard to be angry with him. 

Of course, everyone was worried about John. For heaven’s sake, he had a lacework of stitches for the first two weeks after the accident. For the first two days, he was confined to the hospital for a concussion. She knew that the people in the waiting room, with the exception of Thorne, had been there for him. Dave had looked especially worried--he spent the lunches after the accident in almost complete silence, headphones fused to his ears. Kretta liked that none of the teachers harassed him about his new quiet, almost surly attitude. That was another benefit of a smaller school, she decided. The teachers knew their students.

Dave was normally a decent student. He was polite, punctual, and studious (or at least, considerate enough to pretend). The table she sat at every other day was quiet, without John’s usual prankster’s gambit. Everyone present clearly felt the loss. Rose had taken to being a touch more friendly, now that Dave spent most of his time ignoring everyone.

What she had mistaken for superiority before in the white-blonde girl turned out to be genuine sincerity, a smidge short of being socially tactful. Rose was intelligent. More intelligent than Kretta would ever be, and she didn’t mind. She and Kanaya had gotten every single bone on the Anatomy quiz right, with very good grace. When it came time to study for quizzes and tests, Kretta was grateful to be included in the circle of people who wanted to get good grades. Jade popped in, too, as goofy as ever, and every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon was spent after school in the library.

Thorne was the same as usual, if a bit more protective, and the group she sat with every other day had more or less accepted her inclusion to their ranks. She went to the study groups too, even if she stayed close to Kretta. Rose and Kanaya more or less ignored her. Dave was nice enough, for how upset he had been, and John continued to be utterly cavity-inducing in his sweetness once his parents would let him behind the wheel again. Jade seemed perpetually friendly to everyone, so it was no surprise that she was the one who started to try and break Thorne out of her shell.

There were more people in the friend circle, Kretta discovered. Terezi and Feferi appeared at times, and an eccentric girl named Nepeta showed up for a handful of advanced classes to supplement her homeschool education. A Tavros was mentioned, too, and various older siblings. She felt guilty for not being able to remember many of the names they said. Apparently Tavros and Nepeta lived on the La Push reservation nearby, with a couple other names. Everyone seemed to know everyone, exactly what she had expected. Dave told her all of this, once he had calmed down enough. John was his best friend, he told her, and he was patient with her stuttering, at least. It was hard to know what he thought of her.

For the first week, she got a lot of questions about what had happened. Most of the questions at first were about John. Did she think he was alright? How had he looked in the ER? Was she upset? As he returned, the questions changed. People wanted to hear the story, try to feel the relative excitement of a life-threatening situation. Each time she told the story, she was careful to mention Cronus pushing her out of the way, considering him the hero in the story even if he had told her to mind her own business. This was her business. He had saved her life, and she was grateful.

No one else had seen him by his car. She thought that strange, at least. He was noticable, wasn’t he? He was tall, at the very least, but everyone said the same. They hadn’t seen him close to her, it happened so fast. It seemed almost rehearsed, but then, Kretta was on end. 

Cronus faded back into the background. How? The Abasolo family anything but ordinary, though as the weeks went on...Kretta started to realize, with some shame, that no one seemed to notice the odd little group of siblings the way she did. But why?

As for interactions, Cronus didn’t say a word to her in Anatomy. Even when Dave walked her to class, stood by the table and talked, he didn’t look. There was none of the same anger she had seen before in his features, only indifference. She watched his hands subtly, observed from afar how his eyes stayed an unremarkable dark brown. How had no one else noticed that? Class after class, she sat a mere two feet away from him, while he pretended she didn’t exist so convincingly that she started to wonder herself, if she was real. If she was present, if anyone could see her. Thorne’s surprisingly affectionate presence was enough to bring her back to reality, but Thorne wasn’t in Anatomy. The class quickly because her least-favorite period.

He must have regretted saving her life. He would have preferred her dead, and so he had taken to pretending she was. It shouldn’t have bothered her.

As the weeks went on, her mother started to notice the change, asking if she was alright. After denial stopped being enough, she conceded that the rain had gotten her down. Seasons were running together in a haze of grey, blue, and green. So much so that when spring came, it caught her by surprise. Only Terezi approaching her to ask about the spring formal really clued her in. Was it spring already?

“Kretta Nactir.” The a in her name was drawn out, singsongy as she caught up to the other girl, her cane tapping at the tiles. Senator, her service dog, trailed loyally behind, fluorescent light glinting off the weird red of her sunglasses. “A word?”

“...Sure.” 

“About the spring formal.” There was a playfully nasal quality to her voice, her permanent and distinctive grin glinting in the fluorescent light. “Do you have any plaaaaaans,” she drew her vowels out, not unusual for her. “About who you’re going to ask?”

“Oh, actually--”

“It’s girl’s choice, after all.” How was she always so...gleeful? There was a slight bounce in her step as they walked, her towards her next class and Kretta towards Anatomy. “Do you have any plans yet? This is a little town, drama spreads fast. I thought soooomeone should warn you about that.”

“I wasn’t planning on going,” she assured. “Dancing isn’t my thing. Anybody in the group can come with me to Seattle, though, if they want. I’m going to find a good book store.”

“There are a few.” Terezi tilted her head thoughtfully. For a blind girl, she was unnervingly good at making it feel like she was staring. “I wanted to make sure that you weren’t planning on asking Dave.”

“Oh, no.” She smiled. “It’s not like that. You should ask him, though, if you want to.”

Terezi laughed her patented, half-crazed laughs. “Oh, no. Nothing like that. Have a good time in Anatomy. I hear it’s microbiology today.”

And so it was. Terezi had a knack for knowing, well, everything.

Microbiology wasn’t the real problem. No. The real problem sat next to her, smelling like stale tobacco and cologne. Not looking in his direction was hard. That piercing gaze...he stared, unashamed. His eyes were dark again, not quite coal, and for a long moment he simply stared. Unblinking. Unreadable. Staring. She tried to meet his gaze, fingers trembling slightly on the table, but looked away shortly with a blush splotched over her cheeks. 

“Mr. Abasolo?” The teacher’s voice broke his focus, and he turned away looking almost disappointed. Was he disappointed with what he saw? Disappointed that she was still the same, that her face was a mess of freckles and blush and her lips were still chapped. 

She wasn’t glamorous by anyone’s estimations. Just a girl, she thought, looking away. Just one girl in hundreds he had already rejected.

“Anaerobic respiration,” he said, the answer to a question she hadn’t even heard.

For the rest of the class, she did her best not to notice him. Or, at least, to not let him know she was noticing him. It was difficult, certainly. His face seemed to pull her focus, the brightest thing in the room, those coal eyes still focused on her when she looked away. The bell rang and she started gathering her things, expecting to hear the sound of Cronus’ chair squeaking on the linoleum as he beat his usual hasty retreat.

“Kretta,” he said, very softly.

She froze. His voice saying her name sounded more familiar than it had any right to. It was stupid, she knew, her little obsession with him. Why spend so much time thinking about a person that wants you dead? Who refuses to speak with you?

“Kretta,” he repeated, like he thought she hadn’t heard him. “Hey…”

Slowly, she turned to face him, eyes to the floor. “Y-Yeah?”

“Look at me.”

Her eyes darted to his face, his eyes. 

“So...I exist?” She asked, her voice still shaking slightly.

“What?”

“Are you accepting my existence again?”

Cronus snorted, obviously caught off guard. “Snarky. I like it.”

Her blush darkened. “I-I meant...are you talking to me again?”

His face fell uncharacteristically. In the months of discreetly watching from the sidelines, she had yet to see him look so...crestfallen. Disappointed, regretful. The smile that he offered her was apologetic.

“No.”

Her eyes found the floor again.

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry.” This time, he sounded sincere. “I’ve been really rude. My mother would be appalled at my manners. But it really is better this way.”

“I understand,” she whispered, already turning away.

“Hey, wait-”

Kretta didn’t wait. She slipped out the door, bag in hand, hurrying to find Thorne before he could try and explain.

It was better this way. Right? She knew what he would say. It was better to let her down easy. We’re different kinds, kitten--he wasn’t looking for a relationship, he didn’t like her, he was gay. Really any of that would have made sense, more sense than him liking her in any way other than pitying her. In a movie, maybe he would like her. That happened in movies, didn’t it? The spoiled boy falls for the poor shy girl. Bonus if she’s a minority. If this were a movie, he would come running dramatically after her. Apologize, offer to take her to dinner. Take her to prom. A fairy tale ending, to high school standards, nevermind how shallow it seemed as she thought about it. People aren’t character archetypes. People are not characters, and life is not a story with neat ends.

Since he didn’t follow, she assumed she had gotten the picture. Her life was not a movie. She was being weird and obsessive, and he wasn’t interested.

That was fine. He didn’t owe her anything. He was a person with his own thoughts and feelings. The sting of rejection was sharp, but she couldn’t be angry for it. She just needed to get herself together, and to stop acting like a stalker. Cronus Abasolo couldn’t be new to having girls obsess over him. Maybe he would understand. Either way, confrontation was good, right? Confrontation solved problems. This problem had been addressed, and it could safely blow over.

Of course, she didn’t so much as look at him for the next two days, until Anatomy rolled around again. Thorne noticed something was up, she figured, but didn’t comment. Part of her felt guilty, knowing it wasn’t her friend’s fault, but the other part...well, a large part of her was having a hard time considering other people’s feelings. The idea of Cronus regretting saving her life hurt. It was every suspicion, every insecurity she’d ever cried over at two in the morning. She wasn’t worth saving. Look at the mess she was making. He saved her life, and she paid him back by being the boy-crazy stalker she had always dreaded being. Seeing him made her think that maybe, just maybe, the girls she’d seen go crazy over weren’t just idiots. Maybe there was some reality in how they felt.

“Kretta,” he tried, very quietly, when Ms. Blythe took a break from her lecture to answer a call from the office.

She kept her eyes stubbornly on her notes, the messy scrawl of her handwriting.

“Kretta,” his voice stayed soft. “Are you mad at me?”

“No.” Her answer was sharp. Don’t look up, Kretta. Don’t. “Why would I be?”

“You kind of ran off yesterday…”

“It’s fine.”

“What is?”

“You’re right. I should leave you alone.”

For once, it was his turn to be surprised.

“I mean...that was the gist of what I was saying, but I kinda...felt like you didn’t catch exactly what I was dropping, if you know what I mean.” He shifted in his chair, clearly uncomfortable.

“I think I understood fine.” At least she didn’t sound angry anymore. Sad, now, she managed to keep her eyes off him. “And it’s alright. Just because I’m attracted to you doesn’t mean you’re obligated to return my feelings. It’s nothing but hero worship, because you saved my life. It will go away. You don’t need to feel guilty.”

Cronus’ eyes widened, almost comically, as she finally look up at him. Her expression was shy, cheeks flushed with embarrassment. If their conversation wasn’t so serious, she might have laughed. It was the first time she had seem him look anything other than flawless. His flabbergasted, bug-eyed expression was...well, ugly, almost. Honest. There was honesty in ugliness, she thought. His froggish expression inspired at least a hint of a smile on her part, a shy little thing that barely showed on her lips.

“It’s alright,” she repeated. “I won’t make things awkward in class, I swear. Don’t worry about it, okay?”

He might have responded, if Ms. Blythe hadn’t picked that exact moment to continue the lecture. Despite her new confusion, Kretta was relieved to have gotten the chance to say something, at least. Maybe he wouldn’t think she was that kind of person.

Class ended and he all but grabbed her before she could leave. His hold on her wrist wasn’t half as tight as it had been on that day in the hospital, but was tight enough that she didn’t have much chance of breaking free without making a scene. Even through her sleeve, his hands felt cold. Unfamiliar. She didn’t like to be touched by strangers, not that it was the first time he had touched her...

“We need to talk.” Cronus looked earnest, pleading, tugging at her wrist lightly--but the honest ugliness of his surprise was gone. Once again his face was perfectly composed, perfectly lovely. “Please?”

“About what?” He really did remind her of a greaser, she decided. Rough, in an elegant way. There was something oddly formal about the way he stood, with perfectly straight posture and a hand behind his back. Of course, there were attempts at being disheveled--his jacket was factory-worn at the pockets, there was a slightly crooked curl that fell to his forehead. His jeans were factory-worn, too. Acid washed, surprisingly tight. 

“Please,” he repeated. 

His boots were scuffed, maybe the only honest part of the illusion. He wasn’t grubby enough, she decided. Not a greaser. But he wanted to be one? His boots were scuffed, and she saw the nicotine stains on his fingers when he went to brush the curl of hair out of his face. The flaws were...familiar, somehow. The look he gave her was flushed with a hint of desperation, now. He must really want to talk to her.

“About what, and where?” Her shoulders straightened, just a hair. Arms to her sides, not crossed over her chest. He might have been beautiful, but he was only a boy. He was only a boy, and she was not going to be scared of him.

“Just about...stuff, okay?” Cronus was getting antsier by the minute. “Behind the office?”

“That’s too private.”

“Please?”

“...Alright.” She sighed, so softly she was sure he couldn’t hear. “But not there. I’ll walk with you to your car?”

“I’ll walk you to yours.”

“Yours is closer….”

“I know.” He looked back furtively, in the general direction of the parking lot, as though he were expecting someone to come looking for him.

“Thorne will be waiting for me by the Gym….”

“She’ll live for a few minutes, right?”

He tried for a winning smile, and managed to look even more nervous. Kretta bit back an argument. Clearly whatever he wanted to talk about was important, even if that didn’t seem very fair to her friend. With some guilt, she nodded her agreement. Tomorrow’s breakfast would have to be something spectacular, she decided, to make up for this. She’d go and get her as soon as...whatever this was had finished.

“What made you think I blamed you for..whatever I was upset about?” He asked, once they were in the hall. 

“You’ve been ignoring me.”

“I ignore everyone.”

“You’ve talked to me before. But it’s alright.”

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

She looked down sadly, to the scuffed toes of her boots. “Maybe not. I’m not really worth your time, actually.”

“I--” His eyes were bugging out again. “What?”

“Oh, come on. If there’s one thing I learned from Phoenix, it’s how people being friends usually works. People who have something to offer each other are friends. “

“That seems a little cynical.” He chuckled, but she got the feeling she had hit a nerve. He gave her a curious look, almost indulgent...and for a moment, Kretta felt a spark of irritation. “My family just...doesn’t fit in. We don’t have friends.”

“People who consider themselves equal are friends,” she told him, careful to keep her tone even despite this new irritation. Her embarrassment was fast fading. “But your family doesn’t talk to the other students, because you obviously think you’re better than them. You’re too smart or too proud for me to help with class work, and even if you’re not wearing designer labels hanging out of every gap in your clothes I know you’re rich.” 

“Just because my mom’s a doctor--”

“That jacket is real leather, and it was probably two or three hundred dollars. I’ve never spent more than sixty bucks on a piece of clothing. I thought you might be ignoring me because you regretted saving my life, since I just sort of started obsessing over you.”

“Why would I--I don’t regret saving your life. It’s not you,” Cronus told her, after a moment of silence, the second they were out of earshot of the general population. He turned to face her, catching her shoulders gently in his hands. His eyes were wide, not quite froggish but definitely emotional. He looked...surprisingly distressed. “I’m glad you’re alright! It’s me, I swear. I like you, Kretta, but I wouldn’t be good for you.” 

She snorted. “Oh, really?”

He seemed taken aback by her newfound confidence. “Well...yeah.”

That spark flared in her. Anger. After days of feeling bad, of trying to respect his free will and humiliating herself to apologize for what she thought was making him uncomfortable, he was...baiting her? After twisting herself inside out, after guilt for cornering him in the hospital and guilt for more or less stalking him, this was his move?

“So you aren’t angsting over your crush on me because I’m poor, unpopular, and pitiful. You’re generously ignoring all of those facts to tell me that you’re ‘no good for me’ because you’re a bad little boy who smokes on school campus and argues with his parents about curfew and the lack of a night life in this town.” As she spoke, she could feel the anger building inside her. It felt good, she thought. Very good. For once, the thorns in her lungs left her breathing alone. “If you’re so sure you would be bad for me, why did you walk me to my car so we could talk?”

“I just...wanted you to know it wasn’t your fault.”

“Why, so I would keep crushing on you, even though it was hopeless? So I would feel sorry for you?” Her disinterest was clear. “Your mysterious allure isn’t all that alluring. I met boys in Phoenix who’ve killed people, and you are a spoiled, pretty brat. I can’t believe I thought it was okay to ditch Thorne for this. Excuse me.”

If she wasn’t so annoyed, she might have been entertained by how shocked he looked. His eyes were bugged out, and he was actually stammering as she turned to go.

“Kretta--wait.”

“Yes?” Resigned to being polite, she looked back to him, one foot already balanced lightly on the curb. 

“You told Pyrope you were going to Seattle this weekend. Do you, uh, want to carpool?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Do you want to carpool--I’m not hitting on you, I swear,” he must have seen the change in her expression. “I’m sorry. You said you were looking for a book store, and I know where to find those. My mom and I go to Seattle a lot, to get books. She doesn’t like to buy them on Kindle, so I drive her and Vemmy up to get them, and the incense for Vemmy’s weird new age stuff. Or clothes. I’m rambling. I’m sorry. Do you want a ride?”

“...You drive your mom to Seattle?” She asked, after a minute.

To his credit, he didn’t look embarrassed. “Yeah. When my dad is out for work, she likes to get out of the house. It’s the rainy season, though, so we can’t really hike. Port Angeles is a little boring, and Netflix is only fun for a week or two.”

“And you’re not just telling me this because you think it will make me like you better?”

“No, I swear.”

He looked serious, at least. 

“I’m going to have to turn you down, but not because I don’t believe you.” She offered him a tentative smile. “The Seattle trip for the weekend is a cover. I don’t like dances, and I need to start looking for a job here, so I can pay my dad back for my car. Thanks, though.”

“No problem,” he smiled, more shyly than usual. Kretta returned the expression, before continuing on to find Thorne.

\--

Unusual request aside, the rest of the day was normal. She and Thorne had developed a routine of sorts. They would go from school to the library, and do homework at the tables provided in the teen section. Thorne ate gummy worms from under the table, ignoring the prominent “no food allowed” sign. Kretta grieved over her math homework, and occasionally stole a gummy while her friend was distracted with English readings. Every once in a while Rose and Kanaya would join them, or Dave might. He was the easiest to get along with. Quiet, laid-back, and just fine with sitting in comfortable silence. Rose was the same, to a stiffer degree. 

But this day, it was just the two of them. Two hours passed in the quiet of the library, rain drumming against the window outside. It wasn’t until nearly closing time that they retreated to Kretta’s house, with plans for dinner.

“Hey girls.” David greeted them with a smile and a wave from his place on the couch. Despite his initial suspicion of Thorne being “a little off,” it seemed he had grown to like the smaller girl as she spent more time in the house. For her part, Thorne just seemed happy to have a little adult approval, even if she’d die before she said so. “Good to see you both. I’ll be off in an hour, night shift tonight, but Thorne can stay over if she wants. I trust you both to behave.”

“It’s a school night, Mr. Nactir.” Thorne was looking at him with wide eyes, reminding him as though he might have forgotten.

“I know. But,” he gave her a conspiratorial smile. “You ladies have always behaved just fine. Not a peep of trouble from either of you. And since you’re both so good about school work, I think I can trust you not to skip. Just ask your mother, and if she says it’s alright I’m sure Kretta would take you to get clothes.”

Her worried frown broke into a smile as Kretta murmured her agreement, already on her way to the kitchen.

“Thanks Mr. Nactir!” She squeaked, hurrying after her best friend.

They were definitely best friends. After even just a month together, they were closer than Thorne had ever been to anyone in her life. So many years of doing things by herself...well, the position of “school loner” was completely overrated. Damn it, she had missed talking to people. She had missed it a lot. But here she was, in someone else’s kitchen. Someone else’s parent had smiled at her, said they trusted her, and was not the least bit upset that she’d already been over for dinner twice that week. The smell of cooking ground beef and taco seasoning sizzled to life while she worked on doing the few dishes in the sink, and for once...she felt as though she were home.

“I can’t believe you have a chore chart,” she teased, glancing at the laminated paper on the fridge. “Did you go all the way to the library to laminate it when you got here?”

“I like to be organized.”

“You even put times on it,” she groaned. “Times!! Krettakins, you’re supposed to be a teenager. Do we need to go over what that means?”

“In a minute,” the other girl mumbled, most of her attention turned to her iPod in one hand, the other absently stirring the ground beef.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?” Thorne’s tone bounced with her step as she all but hopped her way across the little kitchen. “Let’s see, is it...porn?”

“Of course not!”

“Okay, okay,” Both hands went up, the universal gesture for “calm your tits.” “A message from one of many hopelessly lovestruck admirers, begging you to consider going to the spring dance?”

“Getting closer.”

“Oh, is that so?” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively, leaning against Kretta’s shoulder. “Do I get to know who? Wait, let me guess--is John still bothering you about making amends? Does he want to whisk you off your feet for a night?”

“No.” Kretta was smiling, at least. She could be hard to read at times, but this was definitely a good sign. “He’s going in the group. I told him I wasn’t going, and he said I should make it next year. Dave said I should too, for the irony.”

“Is it the handsome, if somewhat overly-ironic Mr. Strider~?”

“Gosh, no. You know Dave’s not really a touchy-feely kind of guy.”

“Hm…” She frowned, having exhausted the most likely possibilities. “Do I get a hint? Is it a boy, and do I know them?”

“It’s a boy.” Kretta conceded. “And you know...of him, I guess. I don’t think he qualifies as an admirer, exactly, but he is being weirdly friendly.”

“Gimme.”

“Okay, okay.” She handed the little device over, before going after taco fillings from the fridge. “Let it be said now, I’m as surprised as you are.”

\-- sanguineSailor [SS] began pestering glitchTestimonial [GT] at 18:32 --

SS: hey  
SS: its cronus  
SS: i uh  
SS: got your handle from egdork  
SS: he gave it up under duress  
SS: im a pushy bastard  
SS: hey

“Well then,” Thorne’s eyes widened. “Would you look at that.”

“How do I even answer him?”

“Let me.”

GT: you have reached the living fire wall for douche bags  
GT: this is Thorne speaking  
GT: are you gonna send her a dick pic and do I have to block your ass

“Thorne, what are you saying?!”

“Only the truth, K. Only the truth.”

SS: christ it just had to be you  
SS: the chick who thinks im some illuminati shit  
SS: just give kretta the phone  
GT: she’s cooking dinner  
GT: answer my question or ill block you, travolta  
SS: what the hell  
SS: im not here to harass her god just give her the phone  
GT: no dick pics?  
SS: not unless she asks, aclivo  
SS: give it up

Thorne snorted aloud.

“What did you say?!”

“Oh, nothing.” She set the little screen down next to her friend, watching her dice a tomato with some curiosity. No one in her family was big on cooking. By which she meant, her mother didn’t cook and neither did she. “It’s safe. I got you. On the other hand, he probably wants to show you his dick.”

“Thorne!”

“You should be proud! And here I thought girls in this town just weren’t good enough for the little prince.” She rolled her eyes. “You should hear how much he complains. You’d think his family was a flock of angels from on high, condescending to interact with the rest of us. Nevermind possible X Files shit. He’s such an ass.”

“It can’t be easy, not fitting in…”

Thorne laughed, if a little bitterly. “If he wanted to fit in, he could have. He doesn’t want to, because he’s a snob.”

“He asked me if I wanted a ride to Seattle this weekend,” she mused, stirring the ground beef. “To make up for being rude, I guess. I said no.”

“Well, good. Play hard to get. Seattle’s a whole weekend kind of trip, and he’s not your boyfriend. Make him work for it.”

“I don’t know if I’m playing anything.” She flicked a stray bit of tomato at her friend. “Dating’s really not my thing. Being friends is fine. I like friends.”

“So what, you want to be Smokestack’s friend?” Mentally, Thorne slapped herself for how defensive she sounded. Good going, Aclivo. Just go ahead and pee on her, why don’t you. Make a sign. “I mean--sorry. Do you?”

“Not his best friend.” The assurance had the air of a promise, and when she looked to the other girl she was smiling. “Don’t worry. Just a friend. It would be nice to have a little conversation during anatomy labs.”

“I guess,” she grumbled, trying to seem mollified. 

“Who knows. Maybe he got the attitude from his parents.”

“I don’t think so.” Her eyes found the floor. “Ranger Abasolo has the lumberjack look going on. He’s a big, gruff guy, and Dr. Abasolo is...really nice.” There was an almost protective edge to the observation. “I don’t think she would like it if she knew he was so rude.”

“Do you know the doctor?” 

“I met her, yeah.” Her shoulders slumped, just a little. “Don’t really want to talk about it now, uh….I think your beef is burning.”

“Shit,” Kretta mumbled, and the conversation was effectively over.

Dinner was a happy enough affair. David was his usual friendly self, chatting readily about any and every topic he could think of. Thorne seemed enthralled, unused to a parent asking her so many questions without accusing her of anything.

It wasn’t until her iPod vibrated to announce another message that Kretta remembered Cronus’ messages.

SS: if you dont wanna talk, just say so

Her cheeks flushed, fingers flashing over the screen as she typed out an answer as quickly as she could think of it.

GT: Sorry, I was cooking.  
GT: How are you?  
SS: its fine  
SS: glad to know aclivo didnt block me  
GT: I am terribly sorry about that. My hands were full, and she took my iPod.  
SS: no password?  
GT: No? I have nothing to hide.  
SS: you know  
SS: good point  
SS: anyways  
SS: whats goin on

“Kretta.”

Her father’s voice made her jump in her chair. She looked up quickly, shoving her electronic down. “Yes?”

“No texting at the table,” he chastised. “It’s rude.”

“Sorry, dad.” She slipped the little device into her pocket. Cronus Ampora would just have to wait.

 

\--

 

“Show me,” Thorne demanded, the second they had retreated up to her bedroom. “Any dick pics?”

“Be serious, Thorne.” She tossed her iPod over. 

“There’s like….ten unread messages.”

“Wait, give it back--Thorne, no!” She grabbed at it, surprisingly fast. “Hey!”

SS: wait shit youre eating huh  
SS: whats for dinner?  
SS: no thats dumb  
SS: ignore that  
SS: whats your favorite food?  
SS: is asking that creepy  
SS: it is isnt it  
SS: sorry  
SS: shutting up

“That’s cute.” 

Kretta covered her face with one hand. “This is terrible.”

“Well,” she tilted her head to the side. “Do you wanna text back?”

“What do I say?”

“That depends. Are you going to tell him what you ate?”

“....I guess.”

GT: I made tacos, but my favorite is tres leche cake.  
GT: A pound cake soaked in three different types of milk. It’s a hispanic dessert, my mother makes it for my birthday. Tiramisu is a close second.  
SS: my mom makes that  
GT: Do you have a favorite food?  
SS: oh, uh  
SS: my ma makes a lot of good food  
SS: but i love eclairs  
GT: Classy.  
GT: As nice as this conversation is, I have a friend over. Should we talk later?  
SS: oh yeah sure sorry  
SS: goodnight  
GT: Goodnight.

“Cold.” Thorne grinned. “Poor guy. You’re absolutely frigid.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

Her friend sighed. Flirting wasn’t exactly her area of expertise, but Kretta (if it was possible) was even more clueless than she was. “Have you ever talked to guy, Kretta?”

“Have you?” She countered, settling on the bed with her back against the wall. “I talk to boys plenty. Just not...romantically.”

“Well, do you watch tv?”

“A little. Pacific Rim was a good movie. And Bates Motel was a good TV show. Have you seen the extended film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice?”

“...No, Kretta. No I have not.” She sighed. “No one under thirty has.”

“You’ve seen all of the X Files, no judgement.” Kretta combed idly through her curls, trying to put them to at least a little order. “My mom likes telenovelas. I know plenty of things about flirting, theoretically. And I’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy.”

“Perfect.”

“Since you have no better points of reference, I don’t think the sarcasm is called for.” Her fingers twisted in her curls. “And now I’ve seen Grease, which was nice. But I don’t think I want to be Sandy. Leather pants aren’t really my style.”

“You strike me as more of a Johnny Cade,” Thorne confessed.

“A who?”

“Don’t tell me you never read The Outsiders in middle school. It’s practically the starter kit for girls who like gay fanfiction, with all that homoerotic subtext….but I digress.” She plopped down on the bed, close enough that their arms were pressed together. Being close only seemed to spur her on. “It’s about a gang of greaser boys, like the T-Birds. But they’re poor, and orphans, and it’s sad. Johnny Cade is a skinny, scared little thing who got assaulted by the preppy kids. You’re a lot like him. And Smokestack is your Dallas Winston.”

“...From context clues, does that put him in the role of boyfriend?”

“Depends on who you ask. More or less, I guess.” Thorne grinned at her unintentional rhyme. “Anyway, Dallas is an ass. He’s rude, cruel, and mean to everyone but Johnny. He loves Johnny, and Johnny makes him more human.” Her head came to rest against Kretta’s shoulder. 

“So I...make him less of a conspiracy theory?”

“Sort of.” She shrugged. “The only thing I’ve ever been able to prove is that he’s an asshole. I’m the only one who doesn’t talk to the Abasolos because I think they’re some kind of aliens. Everyone else avoids them because they’re all snotty brats who think they’re too go for the rest of us. But as your Pesterchum log now proves, there is one exception to that rule. Apparently he thinks you’re good enough to talk to.”

“But, why?”

“Maybe he’s into the sexy sadist doctor trope.”

Her friend shuddered. “Dear god, I hope not.”

“I don’t think you really have to be scared,” the shorter girl promised, stroking Kretta’s fragile shoulder carefully. Gently. She could feel ridges under the fabric, the deep puckers of scars in her skin. One day, she would ask about those scars. One day. “I won’t let anybody hurt you, K. Don’t worry about it. Do you wanna put on jammies?”

There was a moment of silence. Barely more than a second, but enough for Thorne’s heartbeat to start up as her friend tensed ever so slightly against her. That second seemed tense enough to choke her, the air thickening at lightspeed before Kretta gave a small laugh.

“I can’t believe you call them jammies,” she giggled, and Thorne breathed a silent sigh of relief as the tension passed.

The rest of the night was quiet, for the most part. When they settled down to sleep they were close in her twin-sized bed. For someone so skinny, Kretta was surprisingly warm in her sleep. She was out like a light in minutes, something Thorne had always wished she could do at night. Napping in class was one thing, but a full night of sleep? Impossible. And yet, with her freezing toes tucked under the warm curve of her best friend’s skinny thighs, she felt...safe. Cared for, somehow. This was only her second sleepover in her life, the second time she slept in a bed with someone else in, well, as long as she could remember. It was comforting.

So this was what having a friend was like.

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it here, congrats. Thanks for reading. All comments and feedback are appreciated, but it would be super if no one got rude. Next chapter to come.


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